->-'?^'^<^Ti^y^g^' 


f'»/f;f^'^^'^)f'^A\ 


:i  ^  s:  ^^  ^  i-  '!i!  ■««•;/?.  4 


,J\SJ^ 


^^. 


&  >  •-   ( 


P.  C.  KELLY 
ROSLINDALt,  MASS. 


THE 


CAUSE    OF    IRELAND 


PLEADED  BEFORE  THE  CIVILIZED  WORLD. 


BY 


BERNARD  O'REILLY,  D.D.;L.D.;  Laval. 


Not  e'en  the  high  anointing  hand  of  Heaven 
Can  authorize  oppression;  give  a  law 
For  lawless  power;  wed  faith  to  violation; 
On  reason  build  misrule,  or  justly  bind 
Allegiance  to  injustice. 

— Brooke. 


NEW  YORK : 
P.  F.  COLLIEE,  PUBLISHER, 

11 — 15  Vandewater  Street. 


44493 


CopyrigLted,  1886, 

BY 
p.   F.   COLLIEE. 


THE   AUTHOR'S    PREFACE. 


"VTO  Irish- American  who  has  followed,  with  anything 
like  a  kindly  interest,  the  sufferings  and  struggles  of 
the  Irish  at  home  during  the  last  fifty  3^ears,  but  must 
have  asked  himself  if  these  sufferings  were  never  to  end, 
or  if  such  struggles  were,  at  length,  to  be  crowned  by  the 
long-prayed-for  success. 

Yes— we  have  been  long  waiting,  in  our  free  homes  be- 
yond the  Atlantic,  for  the  end  of  these  awful  trials,  pro- 
longed century  after  century  down  to  the  present  year,  and 
borne  with  a  fortitude  and  a  hopefulness,  which  speak 
more  eloquently  than  inspired  voice  or  pen  for  the  heroic 
temper  of  the  Irish  soul. 

We  have  contributed  by  word  and  deed,  as  the  trial 
deepened,  and  the  struggle  became  ever  fiercer,  to  soothe 
the  suffering  whose  source  we  were  powerless  to  _remove, 
and  to  aid  the  brave  men  and  true  who  were  battling  for 
the  cause  of  the  Martyr- IN'ation. 

No  one,  however,  on  either  side  of  the  Atlantic,  or  on 
any  point  of  either  Hemisphere,  where  Irish  hearts  beat 
responsive  to  Ireland's  fears  and  hopes,  but  must  have 
read,  in  the  signs  of  the  times,  that  the  crisis  of  her  fate 
had  come ;  and  that  if  all  her  sons,  at  home  and  abroad, 
will  only  be  true  to  her  isrow,  and  do  each  a  true  man's 
part  to  help  her,  success  is  as  surely  to  be  won  within  the 

iii 


iv  The  Autlior's  Preface. 

next  decade, — perhaps  within  the  next  year, — as  the  sun 
which  sets  to-day  will  rise  to-morrow. 

To  every  Irish- American  whom  this  book  may  reach, — 
layman,  bishop,  or  priest, — vc^j  prayer  goes  with  this,  For 
the  dear  love  of  Ireland  and  the  dearest  hopes  of  Chris- 
tianity, do  NOW  all  that  you  can  to  help  the  cause  of 
Ireland ! 

The  conviction  that  this  crisis  had  come  in  Irish  affairs, 
impelled  me,  after  fifty-three  years'  absence  from  my  na- 
tive country,  to  re-visit  it,  to  see  with  my  own  eyes  the 
land  and  the  people,  and  to  do  what  I  might  toward  help- 
ing on  that  sacred  cause  at  a  time  when  every  day  and 
hour  is  pregnant  with  the  fate  of  the  Nation. 

Before  leaving  New  York,  I  thought  I  knew  Ireland  as 
well  as  most  men  of  my  years  and  position,  whose  lives 
have  been  mostly  spent  in  laboring  among  her  exiled 
children ;  and  I'  flattered  myself  with  believing  that  I  had 
a  fair  conception  and  appreciation  of  our  people's  quali- 
ties. The  study  of  Ireland,  present  and  past,  on  her  own 
soil,  at  this  momentous  conjuncture,  and  the  attentive  con- 
templation of  her  people  as  they  still  subsist,  amid  the 
ruins  of  three  thousand  years,  on  that  to  them  most  hal- 
lowed soil, —have  revealed  to  me  a  moral  greatness  of 
which  I  could  have  had  no  adequate  notion. 

Seeing  what  this  brave,  bright,  intellectual,  and  in- 
domitable old  race  have  endured  and  survived,  how  much, 
through  all  the  wear  and  grinding  of  ages,  they  have  pre- 
served of  the  noblest  features  of  a  great  national  character; 
seeing,  here  in  Ireland,  how  fresh  and  pure  in  heart  they 
are,  how  buoyant  and  hopeful  still;  how  ardently  they 
love  the  Faith  brought  to  them  by.  St.  Patrick,  and  how 
invincibly  they  cling  to  the  certainty  of  beholding  their 


The  Author's  Preface.  y 

own  loved  Erin  a  Nation;— the  conviction  forces  itself 
upon  me  that  such  a  people  must  be  free,  and  in  the  near 
future, — and  that  before  them  lies  a  long  lease  of  national 
life,  a  long  era  of  prosperity  and  hapx)iness,  as  befits  a 
people  still  young  after  thirty  centuries  of  historical 
existence. 

As  to  this  book  itself  and  the  purpose  for  which  it  is 
sent  forth,  some  words  of  explanation  are  due  to  the 
reader. 

It  aims  at  showing,  from  authentic  evidence,  gathered 
principally  from  non-Irish  and  non-Catholic  sources,  the 
enormous  Wrong  done  by  England  to  the  "Sister  Island." 
In  this  single  word  I  would  have  the  reader  include  the 
manifold  injustice  and  oppression  of  ages. 

If  there  exists  a  fair-minded  man,  in  any  quarter  of  the 
globe,  who  calls  into  question  the  fact  that  Ireland  has 
solid  grounds  for  claiming  redress  from  Great  Britain  for 
such  Wroistg;  or  who  doubts  whether  Irishmen  can  justify, 
by  reference  to  the  past,  their  undying  hatred  of  British 
domination,  and  their  passionate  resentment  of  the  state 
of  inferiorit}",  poverty,  and  degradation  to  which  chronic 
misrule  has  brought  their  native  land; — let  such  a  man 
read  this  book,  and  judge  for  himself. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  there  exists  anywhere  a  man  of 
Irish  descent,  whom  the  persistent  misrepresentations  of 
the  English  Press,  or  the  misleading  voice  of  the  public 
opinion  formed  by  it,  have  induced  to  believe,  that  the 
Irish  are  an  incurably  inferior  race,  and  that  the  perma- 
nent misery  of  which  Ireland  complains  is  but  the  nat- 
ural outcome  of  such  inferiority, — I  only  ask  him  to  study 
carefully  the  testimony  herein  adduced  to  demonstrate 
the  contrary. 


Yl 


The  Author's  Preface. 


All  such  men,  if  they  will  only  still  further  consult  the 
sources  from  which  I  have  drawn  my  authorities,  must 
become  convinced  themselves  of  the  great  qualities  and 
virtues  of  a  race  whose  undeserved  misfortunes,  and  un- 
paralleled resistance  to  all  depressing  and  debasing  influ- 
ences, call  forth  the  praise  of  all  sincere  lovers  of  truth  and 
goodness,  as  they  have  won  the  admiration  of  the  most 
enlightened  publicists  of  Europe  and  America. 

Indeed  this  book  was  chiefly,  if  not  wholly,  written 
with  the  hope  that  it  might  be,  in  every  Irish-American 
household,  a  book  from  which  old  and  young  alike  could 
learn  enough  to  make  them  proud  of  Ireland,  proud  of 
their  Irish  blood,  and  firmly  convinced  that  Ireland's 
arraignment  of  British  intolerance,  cruelty,  injustice  and 
misgovernment,  is  supported  by  the  witness  of  her  own 
historians  and  writers. 

The  work  was  not  undertaken  or  carried  on  with  any 
thought  of  reviving  dead  and  profitless  issues,  or  of  stirring 
up  national  animosity,  antagonisms  of  race,  political  or 
religious  passions ;  but  simply  for  the  purpose  of  estab- 
lishing the  claim  of  a  long  and  sorely  oppressed  nation  to 
self-government  and  the  other  rights  of  nationhood,  of  a 
sadly  maligned  and  most  ancient  race  to  the  esteem  and 
admiration  of  mankind,— the  right  of  one  Christian  nation 
grievously  wronged  by  another  to  long-deferred  but  inev- 
itable reparation. 

The  study  of  Ireland's  tragic  history,  amid  her  own 
people,  and  the  records  of  her  Capital  Cit}',  has  filled  the 
writer  with  a  love  and  reverence  for  his  native  country  and 


The  Author's  Preface.  vii 

that  same  people,  which  are,  in  themselves,  a  rich  reward 
for  his  labors.  He  must  cherish  the  hope  that  these 
sentiments  will  pass  from  these  pages  into  the  hearts  of 
his  readers. 

Beenakd  O'Reilly. 
Dublin,  Fehruary  9,  1885. 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS. 


PKELIMINAEY. 

The  Case  Stated:  Page 

The  Tribunal 1 

Purpose  of  this  Plea 1 

It  asks  for  an  unprejudiced  hearing 2 

The  English-speaking  world  biassed  in  favor  of  England,  and  against 

Ireland 2 

Peculiar  grounds  of  Prejudice  in  the  United  States: 

Colonized  when  England  was  fiercest  in  "  rooting  out  Irish  Papists". ...  3 

Guilty  in  receiving  and  treating  cruelly  "  White  Slaves  "  from  Ireland.  3 

America's  opportunity  for  repairing  this  great  wrong 3 

Our  Plea  goes  to  the  source  of  the  inferiority  from  which  the  Irish  suffer 4 

Irish  unprogressiveness  at  home,  and  progressiveness  abroad i. 

Strange  ignorance  of  Irish  History  in  the  English-speaking  world 4 

"  What  do  the  Iri.sh  want  ?  " 4 

Imperative  need  that  Englishmen  should  know  what  they  want 5 

Ireland  a  necessary  member  of  the  British  Power,  but  a  "  diseased"  member: 

Will  it  be  "  Cure  "  or  "  Amputation  "  ? 6 

This  Plea  addressed  also  in  the  name  of  "  Greater  Ii-eland  " 6 

We  plead  that  English  chronic  misrule  condemns  Irishmen  to  manifold  infe- 
riority    7 

No  field  for  skilled  labor  in  Ireland 7 

Irish  energy  and  success  abroad 7 

Irish  Industries  and  Commerce  sacrificed  to  English  monopolies 7 

Revenues  drained  from  Impoverished  Ireland  never  spent  in  the  country.  7 

Crime  of  condemning  a  nation  to  enforced  Idleness 8 

The  crime  unpai'donable,  where  the  nation  is  intelligent  and  energetic. .  8 
The  agricultural  masses  without  interest  in  the  soil;  their  very  improvements 

confiscated,  or  made  a  burthen 8 

The  recent  Land-Law  Reform  rendered  nugatory  by  the  Land  Courts 8 

Centuries  of  systematic  oppression  aiming  to  create  a  nation  of  "  drawers  of 

water  and  cutters  of  turf  " 8 

We  plead  that  husbandry,  handicraft,  industry  and   commerce   flourished  in 

Ireland,  when  not  stamped  out  by  England:  Testimonies 9 

ix 


X  Table  of  Contents. 

Page 

What  a  blight  "the  Curse  of  Cromwell"  Wcas  for  all  social  life  and  industrial 

activity  in  Ireland 10 

We  plead  that,  in  Ireland,  the  reign  of  iniquitous  laws  produces  lawlessness; 

that  systematic  judicial  iniquity  begets  suspicion  of  all  justice;  that 

chronic  oppression  causes  chronic  violence  and  reaction 10 

The  Priesthood  the  sole  barrier  against  desperate  insurrection 10 

We  plead  that  the  Irish  character  is  not  sanguinary;  but  gentle,  amiable, 

sociable,  and  forgiving:  Testimonies 11 

The  charge  of  Ignorance  cast  upon  the  Irish  nation;  and  of  "  Ignorantism  "  on 

their  religion 12 

We  plead  that  such  charge  is  monstrous 12 

We  plead  that  the  one  crime  of  the  Irish  nation  is  to  have,  in  the  beginning, 

possessed  land  which  the  English  wanted 12 

We  affirm  that  the  one  impelling  motive  of  English  aggression,  exterminating 

warfare,  and  religious  pei-secution,  is  Laxd-IIunger 12 

We  plead,  that,  in  spite  of  repeated  confiscations  of  the  national  patrimony,  and 

the  extinction  of  the  ancient  Proprietors,  our  heroic  people  have  held  on 

to  the  Land  as  they  did  to  their  Ancient  Faith 13 

The  Struggle  is  still  for  the  possession  of  the  lands  of  Ireland 13 

The  People  must  and  will  keep  their  "  grip  on  the  land  "  till  the  Wrong  is 

righted 13 

The  matter  and  method  of  our  Plea  marked  out 13 


PART  I. 


THE  COUNTRY  AND  THE  PEOPLE— BEFORE  THE  ENGLISH 

INVASION. 

DiflFerence  between  the  Ireland  of  to-day  and  the  Ireland  of  the  Celtic  period . .     15 


I. 

lEELAND  IN  THE  YEAR  A.  D.  432. 

Physical  Aspect: 

Covered  with  luxuriant  forests  17 

Interspersed  with  cultivated  lands,  pasturages,  hei-ds,  and  flocks 17 

Dwellings  of  the  people 17 

The  Inhabitants: 

A  gentle  race 18 

Prepared  for  the  Gospel 19 

Intercourse  with  other  nations 19 

Phenician  landmarks 19 

Baal-Ti-More 19 

Enchanting  aspect  of  the  southern  coast 20 

Literary  landmarks  of  ancient  times 21 

A  fruitful  soil  for  Phenician  culture 21 


Table  of  Contents.  xi 

Social  Condition  at  St.  Patrick's  coming:  Pag* 

The  people  of  one  race  and  one  tongue 22 

Authority  in  the  Family  and  the  Sept 22 

Principles  of  national  unity 23 

Was  the  ag-glomeration  of  Septs  an  organic  whole  ? 23 

Solemn  National  Assemblies 23 

A  great  National  Code  of  Law 24 

The  Senchus  Mor:  The  Law  of  Nature  perfected  by  the  Law  of  Christ. . .  24 

Land  Tenure  in  the  Age  of  St.  Patrick: 

The  land  belonged  to  the  Sept 25 

The  lands  allotted  for  the  life-use  of  all  public  officers,  not  given  away. .  26 

So  for  the  support  of  Religion  and  all  other  public  institutions 26 

Peculiar  disposition  made  by  St.  Patrick  of  his  rural  churches  and  clergy.  26 

Prevalence  of  semi-monastic  forms 27 

Monasteries  and  Churches  the  creation  of  each  Sept 27 

Public  Hospitality: — A  Unique  Institution 28 

Magnificent  provision  for  it 28 

No  poor  in  Ancient  Erin 28 

Celtic  Social  Hierarchy: 

Nial  of  the  Nine  Hostages 31 

Leogaire  {pr.  Layrie)  in  St.  Patrick's  time 32 

The  nation  weakly  organized  to  act  as  a  unit  for  aggression  or  resistance.  32 

Keserved  for  a  higher  purpose 32 

Lands  assigned  to  the  Kings  inalienable,  because  the  property  of  the 

Septs 32 

Royalty  and  Chieftaincy  partly  hereditary,  partly  elective 32 

Ceremony  of  installation 33 

Strong  tribal  aiiection  for  the  Chief 33 

Peculiar  Customs: 

Fosterage — Gossipred 34 

National  Sports: 

Revival  of  Celtic  Games  in  Ireland  and  elsewhere 35 

Hurling  matches  in  Tipperary 36 

How  Goldsmith  deplored  their  ceasing 37 

National  Celebrations: 

The  Feast  at  Tara  mentioned  in  the  Life  of  St.  Patrick 37 

The  solemn  proclamation  of  the  Senchus  Mor 38 

Basis  on  which  Civilization  reposed  in  Ancient  Erin 38 

The  Domestic  Virtues 39 

Laws  of  Inhei'itance :  Tanistry 39 

The  Tribal  Druid,  Bard,  and  Brehon 39 

The  Gcilfine,  a  relic  of  the  primeval  world 40 

Details  of  the  Brehon  Civil  and  Criminal  Laws 41 

OlTences  compensated  by  Fines 41 

Constitution  of  the  Celtic  Family 42 

Sumptuary  laws,  &c 42 

Love  of  Justice,  characteristic  of  the  Irish 43 

Culture  of  the  Arts: 

High  appreciation  of  learning  in  Erin 43 

Art  and  industry  regulated  by  the  social  needs 44 


xii  I'aUe  of  Cunients. 

Architecture:  Pe«e 

Light  thrown  on  ancient  architecture  by  Archaeologists 44 

The  Ancient  Irish  loved  the  freedom  of  the  fields 45 

Wood  generally  used  in  constructing  their  dwellings 45 

Homes  of  the  farmers  and  herdsmen 46 

Industrial  Art  in  the  Fifth  Century 46 

Fabrics  of  linen  and  wool 47 

Esthetic  instincts  of  the  Irish  race 47 

How  they  wore  their  garments 47 

Ornaments 47 

Poetry,  Music,  and  Song: 

Testimonies 48 

The  Harp 48 

Enthusiastic  love  of  the  National  Airs 49 

St.  Patrick's  Day  celebrated  in  Exile 49 

Music  and  Song  foster  the  love  of  Irish  Nationality 50 

The  Ideal  Natiox  worshipped  under  the  name  of  the  Dark  Kosaleex.  50 


IL 

PROGRESS. 


Ireland  become  the  Teacher  and  Apostle  of  Western  Europe 52 

A  people  intoxicated  with  the  divine  doctrine  of  the  Gospel 52 

The  Missionary  Spirit: 

Columba  (or  Columkille)  and  lona 53 

Columbanus  in  Gaul,  Helvetia,  and  Italy 53 

The  Well-Springs  in  Ireland  of  Learning  and  Sanctity 54 

Destruction  among  the  Churches,  Monasteries  and  Schools  of  Ireland 58 

The  Great  Monastery  of  Kildare  as  an  instance  of  these  vicissitudes 59 

St.  Bridget  and  St.  "Conlaeth 60 

The  Abbess  sells  the  Priestly  vestments  to  succor  the  poor 60 

Christian  Art  conies  from  Home  to  Kildare 61 

Description  of  the  great  Church  of  Kildare 61 

Intestine  wars  destroy  all  these  fair  works 62 

Invasions  of  the  Northmen 63 

Mac  Murrough  the  Bane  of  Ireland 63 

Parallel: 

Saul's  impiety  and  barbarity  in  the  days  of  Samuel 64 

Solomon's  despotism  and  idolatry  after  the  reign  of  David 65 

Conclusion:  The  insane  wars  of  the  Septs  and  Kings  no  argument  against  Irish 

culture  and  piety "^ 

Appendix  A: 

Degeneracy  of  the  Tribal  System 513 

The  destruction  of  the  great  monastic  schools  by  the  Danes  did  not  extin- 
guish in  Ireland  scholarship,  sanctity,  or  the  missionary  spirit 513 

St.  Sulgen  or  Sulgenus ^1^ 

The  English  St.  Dunstan. 51'* 


Table  of  Contents.  xiii 
III. 

PROGRESS   ARRESTED. 

1.  The  Bancs  or  Ostmen,  Pagg 

They  build  walled  towns  on  the  principal  estuaries 67 

Ineffectual  and  ill-organized  efforts  to  resist  or  expel  the  invaders 67 

Barren  victory  of  the  Irish  at  Taragh,  in  980 67 

And  at  Clontarf ,  in  101-t 6S 

The  Danes  embrace  Christianity 6S 

Inconceivable  blindness  of  the  Irish  regarding  the  eacroachments  of  foreign 

powers 69 

Struggle  of  Christian  Civilization  in  Ii-eland   against  these  adverse  circum- 
stances    69 

Parallel  between  the  invasion  of  Barbarism  on  the  Continent  and  in  Ireland. . .  69 

Review  of  the  destruction  wrought  by  the  Ostmen 70 

Grave  Disorders  in  the  Church  consequent  on  the  Ti'ibal  System: 

The  Irish  Cliiefs  imitate  Feudal  Princes 71 

They  make  Church  dignities  an  heir-loom 71 

Put  a  stop  to  by  St.  Malachy 71 

Anarchy  and  chaos  in  the  Irish  Church  consequent  on  non-intercourse  with 

Rome 72 

The  Synod  of  Kells,  in  1152,  reorganizes  the  Hierarchy  and  restores  order 72 

PROGRESS    FURTHER   ARRESTED. 

2.   The  Anglo -Kor mans. 

Causes  of  National  Weakness 73 

The  Noruian  Land-Hunger  the  sole  motive  for  invading  Ireland 74 

The  hyjiocritical  motives  assigned: 

To  lift  Ireland  to  a  higher  civilization 74 

Ireland  persistently  denied  all  the  elements  of  English  civilization 75 

Froude  speaks  for  England 73 

Reply  from  Sir  John  Davies 77 

Reply  from  Hume 79 

Barbarities  of  the  Normans  in  England  as  well  as  in  Ireland 79 

The  English  did  not  use  Christian  means  to  impart  Christian  civility SO 

In  Ireland  the  second  generation  of  English  are  civilized  by  the  Irish 81 

Methods  used  to  check  this  degeneracy  of  the  Anglo-Irish 81 

Atrocious  legislation ,  «o 

Ireland  cut  oft'  from  the  Christian  world 82 

Persecution  of  the  Irish:   Tlic  Statutes  of  Kilkenny 83 

Parallel g3 

Impolicy:   sowing  hatred,   instead  of  brotlierly  love,  between  two  Christian 

peoples 84 

Were  Irish  institutions  and  customs  barbarous  ? 84 

Irish  fidelity  to  the  glorious  past 86 


xiv  Table  of  Contents. 

PART    SECOND. 

THE   HISTOEICAL    LAND    QUESTION    IN    IRELAND. 


I. 

BY  WHAT  RIGHT  IRELAND  WAS  INVADED,  AND  HER  LANDS 
TAKEN  POSSESSION  OF. 

Page 

Dermod  Mac  Murrougjli  and  Henry  II 89 

The  Norman  Adventurers 90 

The  slaughter  at  Waterford,  an  ominous  beginning 90 

Henry  II.  organizes  a  Vice-regal  government  and  establishes  English  Law. ...  92 

Heroic  efforts  of  St.  Lawrence  O'Toole  to  unite  the  Irish  princes 92 

Ireland  divided  among  the  Adventurers 92 

The  Question  of  Right: 

The  cession  of  lands  or  titles  by  the  Irish  Princes  null  and  void 94 

Adrian's  pretended  Bixll  no  title  at  all 94 

The  establishment  of  Castle  Rule 95 

The  great  Instrument  for  confiscation  and  extermination 95 

Officialism: 95 

Made  up  of  needy  adventurers  come  to  prey  upon  the  country 96 

Testimonies:   Crawford,  Leland,  Count  Murphy 96 

The  two  first  Lords  Justices: 

The  two  chief  brigands  appointed  to  rule  and  judge 97 

The  English  Interest  personified  in  the  "  land-hungry  " 98 

Opposed  to  both  the  Anglo-Irish  and  the  Celtic  Irish 98 

Always  promoting  rebellion  as  a  pretext  for  confiscation  and  extermi- 
nation    99 

The  "  English  Rebels  "  and  the  "  Irish  Enemy  " 99 

The  working  of  Castle  Officialism: 

The  Lord  Lieutenant  Anthony  Lucy 100 

The  Lord  Deputy  Ufford 101 

400,000  acres  confiscated  by  the  latter 102 

Officialism  like  the  Car  of  Juggernaut 102 

Made  itself  independent  of  royal  control 102 

The  oppressed  Irish  welcome  Edward  Bruce 103 

Address  of  the  Irish  to  the  Pope 103 

Castle  OSicialism  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth: 

Burghley,  in  England,  in  favor  of  conciliating  and  fostering  the  Native 

Irish 104 

Raleigh  and  Spenser,  in  Ireland,  thwart  and  defeat  his  policy 104 

Coercion  ( "  fire  and  sword  ")  the  order  of  the  day  at  the  Castle  then,  as  it 

is  now 105 

The  Nemesis 105 

Raleigh  chiefly  responsible  for  Elizabeth's  "  exterminations  " 107 


Table  of  Contents.  xv 


U. 

THE  COUNTRY  AND  THE  PEOPLE   UNDER  THE  ENGLISH  METHODS 
OP  "CIVILIZING"  THEM, 

1.   The  Country. 

Devastation :  Page 

Pointed  ont  with  its  causes  in  Petition  to  Pope  John  XXII 110 

Continual  border-warfare  and  destruction 110 

Extends  into  all  the  Provinces 110 

Soil  left  long  waste  grows  reedy Ill 

The  Celtic  unmixed  Districts  still  a  land  of  plenty Ill 

The  Celtic  wave  constantly  returning  upon  the  "  English  lands  " 112 

Condition  of  this  portion  of  the  country  in  1550 112 

Munster  wasted  by  the  wars  between  Geraldines  and  Butlers 113 

In  spite  of  all  these   drawbacks   Ireland   might  easily  be  "  a   Paradise  of 

Pleasaunce  " 113 

Cvilture  of  flax  and  manufacture  of  linen 113 

The  woollen  industry 114 

2.  The  People. 

The  prascriptive  legislation  of  Kilkenny  renewed  by  the  Tudors 114 

Alarmed  at  the  Celts  swarming  evcrj'where 115 

Alarmed  at  the  Anglo-Irish  "degeneracy  " 115 

"  The  Irish  must  go  from  Ireland  " 116 

The  Policy  of  Proscription  and  Extermination 116 

The  Irish  language;  the  Wai'-Cries 116 

No  Irish  Patronymics  in  Baptism 117 

New  family  names  suggested 117 

Irish  "Obstinacy"  ? 117 

No  place  for  an  "  Irishman"  in  the  Catholic  Church  of  Ireland 117 

No  Irish  Monks  or  Nuns  in  the  Monasteries 117 

No  Church-preferment  for  the  Irish 118 

No  "  Irish"  Schools  or  Universities  ior  Irishmen 118 

Dead  failure  of  this  atrocious  legislation 118 


PAET    III. 

THE  PERIOD  OF  PLANTATION  AND  EXTERMINATION. 


I. 

THE  LAND  QUESTION  UNDER  THE  TUDORS. 

1.  ffenrn  VII.  (1485-1509). 

Boundaries  of  the  English  Pale  in  1485  120 

"  Black  Rent "  levied  by  the  Irish 120 

Phenomenal  vitality  of  the  Celt 121 


xvi  Table  of  Contents. 

Page 

Policy  of  Repression  and  Extermination 122 

Parliament  fitted  for  the  purpose  by  the  Poynings  Act 122 

The  Earl  of  Kildare  humbled  by  Poynings 123 

Kildare  appointed  Lord  Deputy 123 

He  is  made  the  instrument  of  ruin  to  his  class,— both  English  and  Celts.   124 

2.  Hmry  VIII.  (1509-154:7.). 
Wolsey's  Irish  Policy  thoroughly  English 124 

Plans  of  "  reform  "  in  Ireland  prepared  for  Wolsey 125 

Condition  of  both  "  Englishry  "  and  "  Irishry  " 125 

The  Sword  to  be  the  Regulator  in  Ireland 127 

Pandar's  description  of  Ireland 127 

Divisions  among  the  Irish  open  the  way  to  English  Plantations 128 

Henry  VIII. 's  Policy:  Coercion  and  C(mciliation 129 

Kildare's  government  thwarted  by  the  Castle  Officials 130 

The  forged  letters  that  Lord  Thomas  Fitz  Gerald  received 131 

The  House  of  Butler  against  the  Pope 132 

Henry's  Historical  Lie 135 

The  Reformation  divides  the  Anglo-Irish  nobles  into  two  hostile  parties 136 

War  on  the  Brehon  System 136 

Henry's  Corruptionist  Strategy: 

Use  made  of  the  Church  lands 137 

Of  English  titles  of  Nobility 137 

No  grounds  for  reforming  Irish  Monasteries 138 

A  Protestant's  .picture  of  their  good  works 138 

Sequestration  of  Church  lands  the  precursor  of  Confiscation  of  the  People's 

lands 1'^" 

Lord  I^eonard  Gray 139 

Plans  for  enlarging  the  Pale 140 

Exterminating  warfare  proposed 141 

Parliament  of  1540: 

Were  the  Irish  Chiefs  in  it  Fools  or  Knaves  ? 143 

O'Neill  and  O'Donnell  not  in  the  Parliament 144 

The  Chiefs  get  the  spoils  of  the  Church 144 

The  Procession  of  Noble  Celts  to  Londcm 145 

They  sell  their  people  for  lands  and  a  title 146 

Tlie  sale  never  ratified  by  the  People 14:7 

The  Irish  Race  perhaps  saved  by  the  change  of  Religion  in  England 147 

3.  Edward  and  Mor>i  (1547-1558). 

The  System  of  Extermination  inaugin-ated: 

The  First  Experiment  in  Offaly  and  Leix 148 

How  Mary  and  Philip  dealt  with  the  Irish 149 

Powers  given  to  the  Duke  of  Sussex 150 

Who  and  what  the  People  are  thus  to  be  exterminated 151 

Described  by  Lord  Deputy  St.  Leger 151 

Review  of  the  Character  of  the  Irish  Celts: 

Their  love  of  Justice , 152 

Dupanloup's  splendid  tribute 162 


Table  of  Contents.  xvii 


4.  Elizabeth. 


Page 


Acts  of  Uniformity  and  Supremacy  made  instruments  of  Confiscation 163 

Long  and  fearful  road  the  Irish  Catholics  have  to  travel 163 

Elizabeth  and  Shane  O'Neill 164 

Criminal  agencies  employed  by  her  to  crush  him 164 

Elizabeth's  complicity  in  Assassination  Schemes. .   164 

Demonstration  of  the  same 164 

Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  Defence  of  Assassination  and  Poisoning 169 

Elizabeth's  First  Plantation 170 

Essex  tries  his  hand  at  extermination 170 

Results  of  the  Reformation  in  Ireland  in  the  year  1576 171 

Sidney  describes  the  most  edifying  diocese 173 

Sidney's  Plans  for  "  reforming  "  Ireland 174 

Elizabeth's  Southern  Plantations: 

An  unchanging  Policy 174 

A  first  experiment  in  Connaught 175 

The  First  Adventurers 176 

Sir  Peter  Carew 176 

Alarm  and  Conspiracy 177 

Elizabeth's  duplicity 178 

The  Munster  Tragedy  begins 179 

Smerwick 179 

"  Six  hiandred  bodies  laid  out  on  the  sands  " 180 

The  tears  of  Lord  Grey 180 

Elizabeth's  pity 180 

She  sanctions  Raleigh's  massacre 180 

Ofiicial  boasting  of  her  Officers 181 

The  Irish  People  driven  to  despair 182 

The  Infernal  Columns  in  Munster 183 

Irish  Victory  at  Glenmalure 183 

The  Satan  of  Dublin  Castle 184 

Munster  ready  for  the  Planters 185 

Edmiind  Spenser  describes  its  condition 185 

He  instructs  the  Government  of  Elizabeth  how  to  exterminate  the  Irish.   186 
He  describes  the  horrors  and  desolation  of  Munster  as  a  model  for  imi- 
tation     187 

He  exalts  its  loveliness  to  induce  them  to  make  it  all  their  own 188 

Raleigh's  baneful  influence  over  Elizabeth 188 

The  Munster  Confiscations  legalized 189 

The  division  of  the  spoils 189 

How  the  Irish  People  took  it 191 

Preparations  for  a  Second  Act  in  the  Tra  gedy 191 

Sir  John  Perrot's  policy  of  Justice 192 

Thwarted  by  the  Castle 193 

Misrepresented  to  the  Queen 193 

Sir  William  Fitzwilliam  sows  the  wind 194 

The  rising  of  the  whirlwind 194 

O'Neill  and  O'Donnell 194 

The  Confederation 195 

The  Period  of  Success 196 


xviii  Table  of  Contents. 

Page 

Mountjoy  turns  victory  into  defeat 197 

Edmund  Spenser's  programme  executed 198 

The  Horrors  of  Mount  joy's  War  described  by  English  pens 198 

Mountjoy  thanked  warmly  by  Elizabeth 202 


11. 

THE    STUARTS    AND    THE    COMMONWEALTH. 

1.  James  I.  (1603-1625). 

His  duplicity  from  the  beginning 203 

The  Irish  Catholics  deceived  into  great  hopes 204 

The  revival  of  Catholic  worship 204 

Confederation  of  the  Southern  Cities 205 

The  Irish  Septs  in  1603 207 

How  and  where  they  taught  and  learned 209 

The  Brehon  Institutions 210 

Their  experience  of  English  Law 210 

The  Land  Policy  of  James  1 212 

How  the  pretext  was  found  for  the  first  great  Confiscations 213 

Royal  falsehoods  for  justification 214 

Sir  Arthur  Chichester's  share  in  Ireland's  misfortunes 217 

The  Plantation  of  Ulster 218 

No  Catholics  and  No  Irish  to  be  admitted  as  proprietors  or  tenants 219 

The  Plan  brought  home  to  the  American  Mind 219 

Details  of  the  Plantation  Scheme 220 

A  long  series  of  wrongs  to  illustrate  its  Avorking 220 

Panegyrics  pronounced  on  James'  Plantation  Policy 223 

How  the  Ulster  Undertakers  dealt  with  the  expropriated  Irish  in  1610 224 

Thomas  Blennerhassett's  plans  for  securing  prosperity  to  the  plantations 226 

The  wonderful  Grip  the  Kerne  keep  on  the  land 226 

How  this  heoric  race  is  to  be  hunted  down  like  the  wolf;  gigantic  "  battues". .   227 

How  the  Irish  increase  under  the  harrow  in  IGIO 229 

What  came  of  the  Blennerhassett  Plantations 231 

The  Inveterate  Iniquity  of  Land  Tenure  in  Ireland 232 

Plantation  and  Extermination  in  Leinster 233 

Radicalism  on  the  Throne  of  England  in  1610;  and  Radicalism  among  the 

English  People  in  1885 233 

The  Wr(jxg  done  by  the  English  Plantations  in  Ireland  must  be  Righted 234 

The  Celtic  counties  of  Leinster  an  obstacle  to  Anglification 234 

Leland  justifies  the  Confiscation  and  Extermination 234 

Walpole  condemns  it 235 

How  James  I.  "  found  a  title  "  to  the  lands  of  Leinster 236 

The  Packed  Juries 236 

It  was  also  the  work  of  the  Castle 237 

Curious  apologies  for  James'  wholesale  Plunder 237 

James'  "  General  and  Free  Pardon  "  a  trap  for  Irish  Catholics 239 


Table  of  Contetits.  xix 

Page 

Results  of  both  Plantations 240 

The  eloquence  of  figjures 240 

What  became  of  the  Leinster  Celts  ? 242 

Planting  and  Protestantizing  Munster 242 

A  typical  instance  of  the  manner  in  which  Irish  families  were  dispossessed: 

The  O'Byrnes  of  Wicklow 243 

Sir  William  Parsons  and  fellow-conspirators 243 

How  they  managed  a  trial  in  Dublin  Castle  in  1626-28 243 

The  Maamtrasua  Trials  compared 246 

The  Two  Arch-Villains  who  wrought  out  the  ruin  of  Ireland  from  1600  to  1649.  246 

Richard  Boylk,  the  "  great  Earl  of  Cork  " 247 

Sir  William  Parsons,  Lord  Justice 2.50 

How  Irish  Bishops,  &c.,  feathered  their  nests 250 

The  Plantation  of  Connauoht: 

First  contemplated  by  James  1 251 

An  old  man's  dream  of  greed 251 

The  scheme  of  Protestantizing  Counaught 252 

2.  Charles  I.  (1625-1649). 

The  Plantation  of  Connaught, — delayed  perforce 253 

Odious  duplicity  of  James  I.  toward  the  Connaught  landlords 253 

Charles  I.  follows  in  the  paternal  footsteps 254 

The  Landlords  of  Connaught  "  the  Goose  that  laid  the  Golden  Egg". . . .  254 

The  men  who  aided  James  and  Charles  in  their  schemes  of  confiscation 254 

"  The  scum  of  all  Scotland  and  England  "  hungering  for  the  lands  of  Ireland. .  254 

The  Ancestors  of  the  Irish  landed  Aristocracy 254 

The  Irish  Catholics  alarmed  by  the  Connaught  scheme 255 

They  sue  for  the  "  Graces,"  and  pay  for  them  in  advance,  to  prevent 

"  Plantation  " 255 

History  of  these  "  Graces  " 255 

A  simple  "  petition  of  right " 255 

How  the  King  broke  his  faith  with  the  Irish  Catholics 257 

A  history  of  royal  infamy 257 

The  storm  of  religious  intolerance  raised  by  the  promised   concessions  to  the 

Catholics 258 

Archbishop  Usher's  furious  manifesto  against  the  Papists 258 

It  excites  all    England 259 

The  King  breaks  his  word 259 

Lord  Falkland's  Proclamation  against  Catholic  worship,  Priests,  &c 260 

Adam  Loftus  and  Richard  Boyle  at  work  brewing  mischief 260 

Lord  Strafford  and  the  Irish  Catholics 261 

Ireland  to  be  treated  as  a  conquered  country 262 

The  Irish  Celt  to  have  no  rights  in  Ireland 263 

t'he  Plantation  of  Connaught,  and  Strafford 263 

How  he  went  about  it 263 

The  Lord  Chief  Justice  and  Chief  Baron  bribed  by  the  King  to  "  find  the 

King's  title  " 264 

Roscommon  yields,  and  is  confiscated 264 

Galway  resists 264 

Horrible  tyranny  of  Strafford  toward  Sheriff  and  Jury 264 


XX  Table  of  Contents. 

Page 

The  Catholic  Lawyers  challenged  to  take  the  oath  of  supremacy 265 

Connanght  conquered 265 

"A  fair  opportunity  to  root  out  the  Irish  " 265 

Strafford  sacrifices  Irish  trade  to  English  interests 265 

I^TERMEDIARY    QrESTION. 

The  part  Religion  played  and  bore  in  this  Persecution  of  the  Celt 266 

The  Protestant  Ascendancy  under  the  Stuarts 266 

Did  they  contemplate  and  encourage  with  the  extirpation  of  "Popery"  the  ex- 
termination of  the  "  Papists  "  ? 266 

Proofs  that  they  did: 

Leland's  assertion 267 

The  Duke  of  Ormonde 267 

The  Lords  Justices  Parsons  and  Borlase  make  a  formal  proposition  to 

exterminate 267 

The  Catholic  Body  in  Ireland  affirm  the  existence  of  a  conspiracy  to  cxttrminate .  269 

"  General  Remonstrance  "  of  the  Irish  Catholics  in  arms  in  16il 269 

"  Remonstrance  to  the  King  " 270 

Parsons  and  Borlase  arraigned 271 

The  reign  of  the  Stuart  Kings  "a  continual  servitude"  for  the  Irish  Nation.  271 

Legislative  machinery  for  oppressing  the  Irish  Papists 272 

Awful  pressure  of  the  Acts  of  Uniformity  and  Supremacy 273 

Fines  imposed  for  non-attendance  at  "  church  "  in  Dublin,  in  1605 273 

The  same  levied  mercilessly  all  over  Ireland 274 

Ecclesiastical  Courts  pitiless  engines  of  oppression 275 

The  Court  of  Wards  described .       276 

A  great  Proselytizing  contrivance 277 

The  Irish  Papist  everywhere  placed  between  Apostasy,  beggary,  or  extermi- 
nation   278 

1641-1653. 

THE   WHIRLWIND   AT   LAST. 

Sowing  the  wind  since  the  death  of  Elizabeth 278 

Revolt  of  the  Irish  spirit 279 

The  twin-fires  that  feed  the  Spirit  of  Irish  Nationality 279 

Strafford's  tyranny  one  great  cause  of  the  Insurrection 279 

Another  Cause  the  acts  and  threats  of  Covenanters  and  Puritans 279 

The  Immediate  Cause  the  conspiracy  of  the  Irish  Privy  Council  and  the 

English  Parliament 280 

Execrable  Plot  for  provoking  the  Irish  to  revolt 280 

Sweeping  assertion  of  Leland 280 

Carte's  Testimony,  clear  and  peremptory 281 

"  The  Lords  Justices  had  set  their  hearts  on  the  extirpation  of  the  '  mere 

Irish '  and  of  the  old  Anglo-Irish  families  " 282 

The  Irish  Nation  thought  it  no  rebellion 282 

The  alternative  "  of  being  hanged  at  their  own  doors  or  turning  Prot- 
estants " 282 

A  noble  attempt,  ill  prepared,  ill  planned,  and  ill  directed 283 


Table  of  Co7itents.  xxi 

The  "Irish  Massacres"  of  1641.  Page 

The  Truth  about  them 283 

They  were  made  the  Pretext  for  the  Cromwellian  Exterminations  and  Settle- 
ment   284 

Examination  of  the  figures  and  facts  in  the  case 284 

Proportion  of  Catholics  and  Protestants  in  Ireland  in  1641 284 

Palpable  falsehood  of  statements  about  the  massacres 285 

Kefutation  of  these  by  impartial  Protestants 286 

Peremptory  documentaiy  evidence 287 

Evidence  from  the  Irish  Insurgents: 

Colonel  Henry  O'Neill's  "  Impartial  Kelation  " 289 

Exasperation  caused  by  Protestant  massacres 290 

Island  Magee 291 

Humane  conduct  of  the  first  Insurgents 291 

Sir  Pheliin  O'Neill's  manifesto 292 

The  famous  "  Discourse  of  the  Two  Privy  Councillors  " 292 

The  tale  of  the  Massacres  a  clever  invention 293 

How  the  Government  fostered  the  Insurrection 294 

Sir  William  St.  Lcger  drives  all  the  Munstermen  into  rebellion 295 

How  the  Lords  Justices  managed  the  Catholics  of  the  Pale 296 

The  "  Packed  Parliament "  that  helped  them 297 

The  Catholics  hanged  if  found  in  Dublin,  and  hanged  because  they  were  in 

their  own  houses  in  the  country 298 

Treaty  between  Dublin  Castle  and  the  English  Parliament  about  "conquering" 

Ireland 299 

Collateral  evidence: 

Journals  of  the  English  House  of  Commons:  "  Proposition  for  the  speedy 

and  effectual  reducing  of  the  Kingdom  of  Ireland  " 299 

They  want  the  lands  of  Ireland 300 

Parliament  ratifies  the  Proposition 300 

Cromwell's  "Settlement  "  foreshadowed 301 

Extermination  begun  in  and  around  Dublin  by  Sir  Charles  Coote 302 

The  Idea  kept  before  the  English  and  Scotch  minds: 

"  Ireland  must  be  treated  like  the  Land  of  Canaan  " 302 

Wholesale  confiscations  in  Dublin  by  the  Castle  Officials 303 

In  Munster  by  the  Earl  of  Cork 303 

The  Holy  War  for  Irish  Nationality:  a  desperate  necessity 303 

Sources  of  Strength  and  Weakness  in  the  insurgent  ranks 304 

Noble  and  Christian  Principles  and  Sentiments  of  the  Confederated  Catholics.  305 

The  first  "  Remonstrance  "  from  Cavan 305 

Dr.  Henry  Jones  testifies 305 

Protestant  Bishops  and  their  flocks  protected  in  Cavan,  while  Seven  Priests  are 

hanged  in  Engled  "  because  they  were  Priests  " 307 

The  Solemn  "  Declaration  of  Rights  "  at  Kilkenny 308 

Was  Phelim  O'Neill  a  monster  of  cruelty  ? 309 

Owen  Roe  O'Neill's  principles  and  conduct 309 

Influence  of  Archbishop  Hugh  O'Reilly:    A  great  Christian  and  Patriot 310 

Causes  of  failure  in  the  Confederate  body 311 


xxii  Table  of  Contents. 

PART    IV. 

CROMWELL. 

Page 

Cromwell's  plan  of  "  Settlement "  foreshadowed 313 

Public  mind  in  England  prepared  for  it 314 

Agencies:  the  Solemn  League  and  Covenant. . . .' 314 

The  parallel  growth  of  Puritanism 314 

Private  interests  and  religious  doctrines 315 

Lord  Forbes  starts  to  conquer  Ireland 315 

Forbes  and  Willoughby's  doings  at  Galway 316 

Evangelical  doings  among  the  benighted  Irish 316 

Spreading  the  rebellion  in  the  West 317 

A  fiendish  Proclamation  from  Dublin  Castle 317 

The  "  Christian  "  spirit  of  the  English  Parliament 318 

"  These  bloody  Irish,"  indeed  ! 319 

The  humane  and  Christian  spirit  of  the  Confederates 320 

Sir  Charles  Coote  in  Dublin 320 

The  atrocious  murder  of  Father  Higgins,  and  of  Father  White 321 

Sanguinary  orders  to  the  Soldiers 322 

The  Irish  put  outside  the  pale  of  humanity  in  England  and  Scotland 323 

Genei'al  Munro's  massacres 324 

Sir  Henry  Tichborne  in  Drogheda 325 

The  dogs  fed  with  their  masters'  flesh 326 

"  Come  forth,  0  Cromvyell!  " 327 

Heralded  by  the  "  Cobbler  of  Aggawam  " 327 

The  mighty  force  supplied  to  Cromwell  by  popular  fanaticism 328 

The  heart  of  England  goes  with  him  on  his  expedition  to  Ireland 328 

His  godly  beginning  in  Dublin 328 

He  shows  his  hand  at  Drogheda '. 329 

Awful  massacre 329 

Some  scenes  of  the  Tragedy 330 

Cromwell  speaks: 

"  Glory  to  God  alone  !  " 331 

False  Ormonde  speaks 331 

Untimely  death  of  Owen  Roe  O'Neill 332 

The  Tragedy  of  Wexford: 

Treachery  among  the  defenders  of  the  city 333 

The  traitor  James  Stafford 333 

Cromwell  describes  the  slaughter 334 

"  It  hath  pleased  God  to  give  into  your  hands  this  mercy  " 335 

Other  Voices  from  amid  the  ruin: 

Bishop  Nicholas  French 335 

300  women  slaughtered  at  the  foot  of  a  cross 336 

The  Poet  Harry  speaks 336 

Lingard  the  Historian  speaks 336 

The  Bible  and  the  Sword  in  Ireland 337 

Bibles  dealt  out  to  the  soldiers  as  military  stores 338 

"  To  preach  and  fight,  and  pray  and  murder  !  " 338 


Table  of  Contents.  xxiii 

Page  ' 

How  Bible  and  Sword  cleared  out  the  land o38 

The  Earl  of  Cork  and  his  Sons 338 

The  Earl  of  Barry  more 339 

Sir  William  Cole 339 

Lord   Inchiquin 339 

Ireton's  performances 3i0 

The  massacre  in  the  Cathedral  of  Cashel 341 

The  Sword  "  drunk  with  Irish  blood  " 341 

The  Desolation. 

500,000  natives  of  Ireland  destroyed 342 

Exile  and  Bondage  for  the  remnant 342 

The  "  clearing  out  of  the  Celts  " 343 

The  Soldiers  go  to  Spain 343 

Their  wives  and  children  sold  to  the  West  India  Planters 344 

Documentary  evidence 346 

The   Settlement. 

The  Transplantation  to  Connaught 348 

The  motive — because  they  made  perpetual  war  on  the  English  colonists.  349 

The  condition  of  Connaught  in  16.'33-54 3d0 

Laid  waste  by  Coote  and  Inchiquin 350 

Hardships  of  the  Transplanted 350 

The  Transplanting  "  God's  Work "! 351 

The  Exodus  into  Connaught 351 

The  Title  by  which  the  New  Landlords  hold  the  inheritance  of  the  Irish 352 

The  emigrants  in  their  Connaught  homes 353 

Desolation  and  starvation  surrounding  them 353 

The  terrible  spectacle  Ireland  presented 353 

Placed  between  Connaught  or  Apostasy 3,54 

Impatient  voices  from  England  urging  "  the  work  "  forward 355 

The  "  Tories  "  swarm  in  the  deserted  provinces 355 

Delays: 

The  jails  filled  with  those  who  cannot  move  forward 356 

"  English  Principles  "  firm  in  the  Army 3r)6 

There  are  not  jails  enough 307 

Courts  and  "  martial  law  "  organized  to  deal  with  the  tardy 357 

No  dispensation  or  pity  for  Proprietors 357 

"  Constant  Good  Affection,"  a  sine  qua  7ion 358 

"  Renounce  Popery  " — and  you  shall  obtain  a  delay 358 

They  prefer  death  to  transplantation .358 

Persons  executed  for  not  transplanting .359 

A  Voice  in  England  denounces  Transplantation: 

Courageous  Vincent  Gookin 359 

Physical  impossibilities  in  the  way 360 

It  only  increases  the  anger  of  the  "  land-hungry '" 361 

The  Puritan  Soldiers  demand  "  Extermination  " 361 

Voices  from  Connaught: 

The  old  inhabitants  unwilling  to  "  move  on  " 363 

The  new  colonists  "disturbed  "  by  more  favored  people 363 


xxiv  Table  of  Contents. 

Page 

The  Transplanted  plundered  of  every  thing 363 

The  plunderers  become  the  new  aristocracy  of  Connaught 363 

Instances  of  great  hardship 364 

The  loyal  Burgesses  of  Munster  fare  ill  in  the  general  "  laud-hunger  " 364 

The  Irish  despair  of  Ireland 365 

The  fate  of  the  real  Celts 366 

They  suffered  and  kept  the  Faith 367 

The  noble  words  of  Vincent  Gookin: 

Applicable  to  the  present  crisis  in  Ireland 367 

Who  took  the  place  of  the  Transplanted  ? 

The  appeal  made  to  non-Catholics  of  every  nation 368 

Ineffectual  attempts  to  establish  a  Protestant  nation 368 

Every  Celtic  trace  of  family  descent  to  be  blotted  out 368 

The  English  religion  to  be  inculcated 369 

The  Puritans  of  New  England  invited  to  Ireland 369 

The  Celt  getting  mixed  up  with  the  Saxons 370 

Thorough  measures  of  Transplantation  adopted  around  Dublin 370 

Ireland  undergoing  a  transformation 371 

The  story  of  Transplanted  Connaught  never  yet  told: 

A  story  as  marvelous  as  the  Exodus 372 

The  Desolation  Cromwell  had  made 374 

Fearful  scenes  described  by  the  Ci'omwellian  troopers 374 

A  voice  crying  out  in  this  Wilderness:   "  Hunt  the  Pi'iests  " 375 

The  Priests  are  accused  of  creating  the  wilderness — "  Hunt  the  Wolf  !  " 376 

The  Priests  cannot  be  kept  out  of  Ireland 377 

The  jails  filled,  with  them  in  1656 377 

Sent  in  .shiploads  to  the  Barbadoes 377 

The  People's  voice  heard  in  the  Wilderness 378 

They  believe  in  God  and  Ireland 379 

"Rather  throw  themselves  headlong  into  the  sea  than  become  loyal  to 

England  " 380 

The  "  Tories  "  in  the  Wilderness 381 

How  they  were  hunted  down 381 

The  entire  population  held  responsible  for  them 381 

Instances - 382 


PAET  V. 

THE   LAST,  LONG  PERIOD   OF   WRONG  (1660-1885). 


I. 

THE    TWO    LAST    STUAETS. 

SoDRCES  of  the  right  by  which  the  present  Irish  landlords  hold  their  property. .  385 

"  No  other  right  but  the  power  to  take  and  keep  it  " 38« 

Lord  Broghill's  Plan  of  dividing  the  Plunder •   38<5 


Table  of  Co?itents.  xxv 

Page 

The  First  Act  of  Settlement 387 

John  Cooke's  Sessions  of  the  High  Court 387 

Every  nican  born  in  Ireland  since  October  23,  1641,  declared  a  traitor. . . .  388 

The  real  treason  was  the  possession  of  landed  property 388 

This  Wron^  sanctioned  by  Charles  II 389 

The  Conspiracy  to  secure  the  possession  of  the  Plunder 390 

Precautions  to  prejudice  English  Public  Opinion  and  the  Eoyal  Mind  against 

Irish  Papists 391 

They  must  be  excluded  from  all  hope  of  redress 391 

Strategy  resorted  to 391 

The  Plunderers  meet  in  Parliament 394 

The  Plunder  Legalized 394 

.  The  Protestant  Ascendancy  constituted 394 

The  Bill  of  Settlement  by  which  the  lands  of  the  Nation  are  confiscated 395 

The  High  Court  of  Claims,  a  farce  and  a  fraud 399 

Eesume  of  Irish  Policy 399 

The  Acts  of  Settlement  and  Explanation,  the  Magna  Charta  of  Irish  Protestants.  400 

Statistical  Tables  showing  how  the  Plunder  was  divided 401 

Crowning  act  of  infamy  of  the  Plunderers'  House  of  Commons 402 

Instances  of  perjury  before  the  Court  of  Claims 403 

The  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  in  Ireland  well  provided  for 404 

What  was  left  to  the  Church  of  St.  Patrick 405 

The  Anglo-Iri.sh  Catholics  under  the  two  last  Stuarts 40G 

Self-seeking 406 

No  thought  of  the  Celt 406 

The  Final  Struggle  between  the  Old  and  the  New  English  Interests 409 

James  II.  and  William  of  Orange 410 

The  Irish  have  a  King  of  their  own  to  fight  for 411 

Enthusiastic  answer  to  the  call  to  arms 411 

Magnificent  but  unavailing  courage 412 

The  triumph  of  the  New  Interest 413 

Sorry  that  the  Irish  had  not  been  exterminated 414 

Famixk  again  ! 414 

How  the  Treaty  of  Limerick  was  ratified 415 

How  the  Irish  were  "  confirmed  in  their  possessions  " 416 

The  Final  Settlement 417 

What  became  of  the  men  of  Ireland  under  the  New  Interest 417 


II. 

THE  PEOTESTANT  ASCENDANCY  AND  THE  LAND. 

The  Penal  Laws. 

The  Penal  Laws, — a  well-devised  machinery  for  degrading  a  nation 419 

It  extended  to  all  the  relations  and  duties  of  public  and  private  life 420 

It  began  by  degrading  the  Coxsciexce 420 

Parents  were  morally  forced  to  betray  their  duty  to  their  children 420 

Children  to  betray  their  duty  to  their  parents 420 


xxvi  Table  of  Contents. 

Page 

Its  principal  aim  to  prevent  Catholics  from  being  Proprietors 421 

Disfranchisement 421 

Disqualification  for  public  office 421 

Irish  Papists  excluded  from  cities  and  towns 421 

Further  penalties  and  disqualifications  under  Queen  Anne 422 

Further  violations  of  the  Law  of  Nature 422 

Marriage  between  Protestant  and  Catholic 422 

Instances  of  the  practical  operation  of  this  Code 423 

Arthur  O'Leary,  '  the  Outlaw  ' 423 

Protestant  testimony  as  to  the  Purpose  of  the  Penal  Laws 424 

Degrading  the  Nation  by  enforced  and  hopeless  Poverty 425 

Degrading  the  Nation  by  enforced  and  hopeless  Ignorance 426 

Effects  of  extreme  poverty  on  the  body  and  on  the  soul 426 

A  whole  people  deprived  of  civilized  homes 427 

How  ignorance  was  counted  on  to  break  down  the  spirit  of  a  proud  and  intel- 
lectual race 429 

Perfect  devices  of  the  Penal  Laws  to  make  and  keep  the  Irish  Papist  ignorant.  429 

How  the  Irish  defeated  their  purpose 430 

The  Irish  youth  flying  away  with  the  "Wild  Geese,"  and  seeking  Con- 
tinental schools 431 

The  Hedge-Schools  at  home 431 

Love  of  the  Irish  Peasants  for  the  Classics 432 

The  real  danger  of  their  degrading  the  People  at  length 433 

The  Irish  intellect  not  quenched  in  1885 433 

What  they  held  up  to  Ireland  instead  of  the  Old  Church 433 

Wealth  of  the  Irish  Protestant  Bishops 434 

Their  intolerance 434 

The  Schools  founded  to  entrap  Catholic  children 435 

What  the  Catholic  Clergy  did  to  save  their  people 435 

The  Monks  and  Friars  swarming  back  from  the  Continent 436 

The  Irish  Bishoi)s  and  the  life  they  led 436 

How  the  Popes  helped  us  in  our  poverty 437 

The  inseparable  uniim  of  the  Priests  and  the  People 438 

How  the  Catholic  Gentry  resisted  these  degrading  agencies 439 

W'hat  the  New  Landlords  did  for  the  Country  and  the  People 440 

Terrible  distress  among  the  Peasantry  in  1761 441 

How  it  was  brought  about 442 

Small  farmers  and  laborers  cleared  out 442 

The  real  effective  cause  of  Secret  Societies 442 


III. 


THE    LAND,    ITS    POSITION,    COMMERCIAL    ADVANTAGES,    MINERAL 
WEALTH,    AND    INDUSTRIES. 

1.   The  Land  and  its  Natural  Advantages. 

Geographical  Position  for  Commerce 444 

Well  known  to  the  Ancients 444 

Edmund  Spenser's  opinion 445 


Table  of  Contents.  xxvii 

The  Soil:  Page 

Natural  fertility 446 

En'oneous  opinions  about  it 446 

Proportionate  area  under  cultivation 446 

Even  the  mountains  not  barren 447 

Superiority  over  all  Great  Britain 447 

The  Climate: 

Terra  tcrrarum  temperaUssima  ('  of  all  climates  the  mildest ') 448 

The  cattle  of  Munster  fattened  wholly  on  grass  iu  Winter 448 

Disadvantages  of  excessive  moisture 449 

Paradisaical  climate  as  compared  with  that  of  our  Northern  and  Middle 

States 449 

Favorable  to  animal  life 449 

Mineral  Wealth: 

Unknown  or  shamefully  neglected 450 

Distribution  per  Counties 450 

A  wonderful  display  of  natural  treasures 452 

Opinion  of  English  Mining  Engineers  and  Mineralogists 453 

The  richness  of  the  Arigna  Mines 453 

M ismanaged 453 

Admirable  Water  Communications: 

Estuaries  and  Bays 454 

Rivers  and  Lakes 454 

Irish   Canals 455 

Magnificent  Canalization  Scheme  of  Irish  Parliament  in  Grattau's  time.  455 

Partially  carried  out 455 

The  Fisheries  of  Ireland: 

Neglected 456 

Why  are  all  these  sources  of  National  Wealth  sealed  up  ? 456 

Gradual  destruction  by  England  of  Irish  Industries  and  Trade 457 

The  servile  Legislatui'e  of  the  Protestant  Ascendancy 458 

An  essential  part  of  the  Empire  treated  worse  than  a  colony 458 

English  monopoly  an  incubus 459 

Motives  of  British  Policy  toward  Ireland: 

Lord   Strafford 460 

William  III.  and  the  English  Peers 460 

Unblushing  selfishness 461 

Brave  battle  of  the  Irish  manufacturers  with  the  British  Parliament 461 

Beaten 461 

Ireland  cut  off  from  trading  even  with  the  Colonies 461 

Allowed  to  import  Rum  only,  that  it  may  kill  the  Irish  distilleries 462 

The  Irish  Breweries  sacrificed 462 

And  the  Glass  manufactures 462 

Incredible  servility  of  the  Irish  Parliament 462 

Disastrous  effects  of  the  destruction  of  Trade  and  Industry: 

Euormous  decrease  of  cultivated  land;  and  of  the  farming  population 463 

English  corn-growers  jealous  of  the  Irish 463 

No  Irish  Corn  ! 464 

Potato  blight  of  1725 464 

Irishmen  cannot  labor  or  live  in  Ireland 464 


xxviii  Table  of  Contents. 

Page 

Fearful  result  of  abusing  the  gifts  of  bountiful  Nature 464 

This  result  a  pressing  matter  for  consideration  in  our  day 465 

What  the  "  English  Minority  "  say  about  it 465 

"What  the  "  Majority  "  think  and  say 465 

2.   The  Battle  for  Irish  Trade  in  the  Parliament  of  Ireland. 

The  Corrupt  House  of  Commons 465 

The  Castle  Agencies 466 

The  death  of  Industry  and  Trade  resulting  in  exterminating  the  Celts 467 

General  distress: 

The  Whiteboys  and  Oakboys 467 

The  real  source  of  Agrarian  Crime  in  the  last  century: 

Landlordism  and  Coercion 467 

Opinion  of  Lord  Chesterfield 467 

Identity  of  this  cause  in  1767-68,  and  1880-85 467 

How  the  Castle  bought  and  sold  in  those  days 467 

The  first  lightening  of  the  burthen  of  Irish  Papists 467 

The  War  of  American  Independence 467 

Irish  Industries  suffer  at  first  by  the  War 468 

Henry  Grattan  champions  Free  Trade  for  Ireland 469 

Catholics  allowed  to  hold  leases  oi fifty  acres  of  bog ! 469 

The  beginning  of  concession 469 

The  first  demand  for  Home  Rule  and  Free  Trade 470 

The  battle  for  Irish  Trade  and  Manufactures  in  1783 470 

The  Patriots  defeated  and  Agrarian  Violence  begun 471 

Miserable  condition  of  the  Munster  Peasantry 471 

Church  Tithes  added  to  Rack-rents 471 

Despair,  resistance.  Coercion 472 

3.   Remedies. 

Try  the  "  Engine  of  Redress  !  " 472 

Begin  with  the  Land:  Cure  its  wounds  and  make  it  a  field  for  Labor 472 

Necessity  of  Drainage  in  Ireland 473 

Why  the  lands  aro  not  drained 474 

Count  Murphy's  opinion 474 

Government  Drainage  Works  on  the  Shannon 476 

A  disastrous  failure 477 

This  is  what  the  Government  has  done  and  still  continues  to  do  with  the  Land 

in  Ireland 478 


IV. 

THE    RELAXATION    OF    THE    PENAL    LAWS    AND    THE    TRIUMPH    OF 
COERCION    AND    CORRUPTION    (1794—1800). 

Pitt's  criminal  duplicity  in  dealing  with  Ireland: 

He  sends  over  Lord  Fitzwilliam  with  illusive  powers 479 

Allowed  to  believe  he  was  authorized  to  relieve  and  emancipate  the 
Catholics 480 


Tahh  of  Contents.  xxi^ 

Grattan  moves  for  their  admission  to  Parliament 480 

The  Castle  Clique  besiege  George  III 480 

Fitzwilliam  '  authorized  to  resign ' 480 

Disappointuient  and  despair  drive  men  into  the  Secret  Societies 481 

The  '  Peep-o'-day  Boys '  and  the  '  Defenders  ' 481 

Birth  of  Oraxgkism 481 

"A  lawless  banditti "  bent  on  exterminating  the  '  Irish  Papists ' 482 

Lord  Carhampton's  wholesale  deportation  of  Catholics 482 

A  "  bloody  Code  "  of  Coercion 483 

Only  increases  despair  and  secret  associations 483 

Hoche's  French  Fleet  driven  away  by  storms 483 

The  fiendish  cruelties  of  the  Orange  Yeomen  and  the  Welsh  'Ancient  Britons ' . .  484 
Reasonable  demands  of  the  United  Irishmen: 

Submitted  to  Parliament  and  rejected 485 

Coercion  not  Concession  must  rule  the  Celt 485 

Often  tried  and  ever  failing 485 

The  Secret  Societies  prosper 486 

How  the  Castle  got  up  the  Rebellion  of  1798 486 

Its  army  of  Informers 486 

The  Castle  History  repeating  itself  in  1880-85 487 

General  Abercromby's  condemnation  of  Castle  Rule 488 

The  Leaders  of  the  Protestant  Ascendancy 488 

How  a  high-spirited  people  was  maddened  into  revolt 489 

Unprepared,  and  unarmed 490 

The  Insurgents  in  the  South  driven  to  revenge  themselves 490 

How  Wexford  was  "  dragooned  "  into  rebellion 491 

Instances: 

Anthony  Pei-ry  and  "  Tom-the-Devil " 491 

Joseph  Holt 492 

Father  John  Murphy  and  his  people 492 

The  Castle  has  its  will  and  its  way: 

How  it  stamped  out  the  rebellion  it  had  created 492 

Lord  Cornwallis  photographs  the  Castle  and  its  butchers 493 

Hell  let  loose  in  Ireland 494 

End  of  our  Plea 494. 


V. 

THE    CONCLUSION. 

How  England's  manifold  injustice  must  be  repaired 495 

Make  Ireland  a  field  of  profitable  labor  for  all  her  sons 495 

Tlie  surface  of  the  island  denuded,  ravaged,  neglected 495 

The  Celtic  Population  lilie  weeds  cast  over  the  stile  in  Autumn 496 

They  must  be  given  an  interest  in  the  soil 496 

The  Land  Law  of  1881  must  be  made  beneficial  by  reconstructing  the  Land 

Courts 4.97 

Coerce  the  Landlords :   Protect  the  Tenants  ! 499 


XXX  Table  of  Contents. 

Page 

Protect  and  encourage  the  Fishermen;  and  develop  the  Fisheries 4:99 

This  is  of  vital  importance 499 

Resuscitate  Irish  Industry  and  Trade 501 

Cease  to  govern  Ireland  as  you  have  done 502 

Abolish  Castle  Rule 502 

Restore  Self-Government  to  Ireland 502 

P'sa  for  Home  Rule  : 

The  National  Heart  ever  set  upon  it 502 

It  is  a  restoration  founded  on  the  essence  of  things 503 

The  Union  one  long  act  of  Coercion 504 

Home  Rule  nmsl  be  granted ;  and  granted  soon 506 

Englishmen  plead  for  it 507 

Cease  to  revile  the  Irish  People 507 

Cease  to  encourage  and  foment  religious  and  political  antagonism  among  Irish- 
men    508 

Catholics  ardently  desire  union  with  their  Protestant  countrymen 508 

Cease  the  shocking  and  unjust  system  of  rejecting  Catholics  from  all  public 

offices 509 

Eloquent  figures  showing  this  exclusiveness 509 

Injustice  in  the  distribution  of  the  Public  funds 510 

Educational  Institutions 510 

Be  promptly  and  generously  just 511 

It  will  repay  to  be  so 511 

It  is  England's  interest  to  be  so 511 

She  must  make  haste  to  be  so 511 

Perhaps  there  yet  may  be  time  to  conciliate  Ireland 511 

The  reason  for  haste  not  in  Dynamite  conspiracies 512 

But  in  the  ever-increasing  numbers  of  intelligent  but  moderate  Irish- 
Americans  ^12 

And  with  these  stand  for  Ireland  all  true  Americans 512 

England's  "  extremity  "  is  also  the  "  opportunity"  of  the  Greater  Ireland 512 


THE    CAUSE    OF    IRELAND 

PLEADED    BEFORE    THE   CIVILIZED  WORLD. 


PRELIMINARY. 


THE    CASE    STATED. 

npHERE  is,  happily,  a  Court  of  Justice  higher  than  any  legal  tri- 
bunal known  in  the  civilized  world.  There  exists  a  more 
august,  independent,  and  incorruptible  judicial  body,  than  any  Leg- 
islature, imperial,  royal,  or  republican;  an  assemblage  at  once  more 
formidable  and  more  impartial  than  Commons  or  Congress,  than 
House  of  Lords  or  Supreme  Court. 

To  this  tribunal,  composed  of  the  fair-minded  and  enlightened  of 
every  clime,  this  Plea  is  addressed  with  the  absolute  confidence,  that 
it  is  founded  on  justice  long  denied,  that  it  asks  for  a  reparation  of 
the  wrongs  of  seven  centuries, — wrongs  so  manifold  and  incredible 
that  history  has  nothing  to  compare  to  them  in  the  recorded  misdeeds 
of  man  toward  man,  or  of  any  one  known  people  toward  another. 

And  this  Plea  addresses  itself  to  the  great  tribunal  of  public 
opinion,  and  through  it  to  the  conscience  of  all  mankind,  not  for  the 
purpose  of  arousing,  increasing,  or  fostering  angry  political  strife, 
national  animosity,  antagonism  between  neighboring  Christian  peo- 
ples of  different  race,  or  the  fiercer  flames  of  religious  and  theologi- 

1 


2  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

cal  passion;  but  for  the  sole  purpose  that  Truth  so  long  unheard  or 
misrepresented  in  the  case  of  the  oppressed  nation,  may  at  length  so 
speak  to  the  justice-loving  of  both  hemispheres,  that  her  voice  shall, 
through  them,  reach  the  oppressor,  and  startle  him  into  a  sense  of 
his  wrong-doing. 

Indeed  we  only  seek  that,  in  the  light  of  truth,  the  right  and 
wrong  in  the  case  be  thoroughly  discussed;  and  that  on  the  wrong 
clearly  and  fully  proven  Justice  shall  pronounce  her  verdict.  That, 
however,  Truth  may  prevail,  we  are  either  to  be  on  our  guard  against 
prejudice,  or  to  set  it  geiierously  aside.  Prejudice  is  like  jaundice  in 
the  eye  of  the  soul  :  it  gives  a  diseased  hue  to  all  the  objects  of 
mental  vision.  This  distemper  must  be  cured,  if  we  would  see 
things  as  they  really  are. 

And  prejudices  spring  up  as  naturally  in  the  mind,  and  from  a 
variety  of  causes,  as  weeds  in  a  garden.  Their  seeds  are  sown  by 
education,  religious  training,  social  intercourse,  and  national  or  per- 
sonal bias.  Habits  of  seeing  things  and  persons  in  a  wrong  light  and 
of  misjudging  them  in  consequence,  are  formed  in  the  atmosphere  of 
our  parental  home,  in  the  school-room,  the  college,  the  university,  in 
every  walk  of  public  and  private  life.  They  become  a  second  nature 
with  us.  It  requires  no  little  courage  to  acknowledge  that  we  are 
prejudiced ;  no  little  generosity,  when  we  are  convinced  of  it,  to 
reform  our  judgment,  and  to  act  and  speak  in  accordance  with  the 
new  light  of  truth  in  our  intellect. 

In  the  United  States,  throughout  the  English-speaking  world,  in 
fact,  the  teaching  of  the  home,  the  school,  the  pulpit,  and  the  press 
has  been,  in  most  cases  and  in  the  greatest  measure,  in  favor  of 
England  and  against  Ireland,  in  the  vexed  question  of  the  former's 
treatment  of  the  latter.  We  must  not  forget, — so  far,  at  least,  as  the 
United  States  are  concerned,  that  they  were  colonized  by  English- 
men at  the  very  period,  when  England,  under  the  Stuarts  or  the 
Commonwealth,  was  putting  forth  her  whole  strength  in  a  desperate 
and  final  effort  to  extinguish  in  Ireland  the  Catholic  religion  and  to 
extirpate  the  remnants  there  of  the  Celtic  race. 


What  is  expected  of  Public  02Jinion  in  United  States.  3 

We  Americans,  in  the  generous  spirit  Avhich  is  daily  informing 
our  better  judgments  and  swaying  our  sentiments,  can  now  afford  to 
remember,  with  a  regretful  shame,  the  undeniable  fact,  that  in  the 
Year  of  Grace,  '1653,  and  all  through  the  reign  of  the  Common- 
wealth, our  New  England  as  well  as  our  Southern  Colonies  received 
yearly  by  the  thousands  Irish  men  and  women,  Irish  boys  and  girls, 
hundreds  of  them  of  gentle  blood,  and  sent  into  temporary,  if  not 
perpetual,  slavery  by  the  decree  of  Cromwell  and  the  English  Parlia- 
ment, for  the  sole  crime  of  being  "Irish  Papists."  We  cannot, 
should  not  forget  that  in  New  England,  as  in  Virginia  and  the 
Carolinas,  and  even  in  Maryland,  these  noble  sufferers  for  the  cause 
of  their  cherished  nationality  and  their  baptismal  faith,  were  treated 
with  a  rigor,  an  intolerance,  an  unchristian  cruelty,  the  very  idea  of 
which  at  present  revolts  the  descendants  alike  of  Cavalier  and  Puritan. 
The  fact  is  that  Episcopalian  Virginia  persecuted  these  poor  Irish 
"apprentices"  (with  this  word  was  "White  Slavery"  disguised)  more 
releiitlessly  than  Massachusetts,  or  Connecticut,  or  Rhode  Island. 

The  very  men  whose  names  are  still  most  popular  in  connection 
with  our  colonial  infancy,  are,  many  of  them,  men  who  were  most 
active  and  energetic  in  promoting,  in  their  day,  the  extermination  of 
the  Irish  race.  I  need  ox\\f  mention  the  name  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh. 
In  another  part  of  this  Plea,  this  worthy  shall  have  to  appear  in  his 
true  character.  Now  we  are  only  appealing  to  the  large-minded  and 
large-hearted  liberality  of  our  own  generation,  as  contrasted  with 
past  prejudice,  narrow-mindedness,  and  bitter  intolerance. 

We  ask  of  the  people  of  the  United  States,  who  love  truth,  and 
justice,  and  freedom  for  their  ow'n  sakes,  and  who  would  fain  extend 
their  benefits  to  every  nation  and  race,  to  put  aside  what  remains  of 
the  old  prejudices;  to  remember  that  they  too,  in  the  persons  of  their 
ancestors,  wronged  these  struggling  Irish,  whom  they  were  taught  to 
hate  and  despise.     Now  is  the  time  to  repair  that  wrong. 

If  the  emigrants  from  the  Emerald  Isle  come  to  settle  on  these 
shores,  which,  according  to  some  eminent  writers.  Irishmen  were  the 
first  or  among  the  first  to  discover  long  before  the  age  of  Columbus, 


4  The  Cause  of  Ireland, 

let  Americans  consider  the  long  ages  of  grinding  oppression  which 
have  produced  the  poverty,  the  apparent  lack  of  culture,  the  un- 
familiarity  with  so  many  precious  things  only  to  be  found  where 
religious  and  civil  liberty,  social  equality,  and  the  development  of 
agriculture,  industry,  and  commerce  have  made  God's  earth  fruitful, 
and  raised  man  up  to  the  full  stature  of  manhood. 

We  shall  presently  see  who  is  to  blame  for  the  unprogressive  state 
of  Ireland,  and  for  all  the  suffering  and  enforced  inferiority  apparent 
in  her  social  condition.  We  shall  see  also  how  wonderful  it  is,  that, 
after  all  the  labor,  the  treasure,  the  blood  spent  in  the  endeavor  to 
extirpate  this  ancient  Celtic  race,  some  remnants  are  still  left,  and 
that  all  the  grinding  of  centuries  has  not  succeeded  in  obliterating 
the  national  features ;  that  all  the  bitterness  with  which  the  Irish 
heart  has  been  fed  for  uncounted  generations  has  not  deadened  in  it 
all  the  instincts  of  humanity  or  quenched  its  generous  warmth.  If, 
on  the  other  hand,  Americans  remark  and  acknowledge  with  pleasure, 
that  in  the  rich  nature  of  these  millions  of  Irish  exiles  now  become  a 
part  of  their  own' great  people,  there  are  qualities  and  virtues  which 
promise  to  bear  glorious  fruit  in  the  sunlight  of  American  freedom 
and  prosperity ;  nay,  if  that  rich  nature  has,  confessedly,  already 
borne  such  fruit, — then  let  our  free  public  opinion,  enlightened  and 
reformed  by  such  inquiries  as  the  present,  react  on  public  opinion  in 
Great  Britain  itself,  and  prepare  the  way  for  justice  to  Ireland. 

For,  strange  as  the  statement  may  appear  to  such  as  have 
examined  what  may  be  called  the  Irish  Question  in  all  its  bearings, 
there  exist  millions  in  Great  Britain,  millions  of  English-speaking 
folk  throughout  her  vast  colonial  empire,  and  millions  in  our  own 
Great  Eepublic,  who  believe  that  Ireland  has  no  injustice,  no  mis- 
government  to  complain  of ;  Avho  look  upon  the  ills  under  which  the 
Irish  are  suffering  as  the  natural  result  of  Irish  inferiority,  improvi- 
dence, and  unprogressiveness.  We  have  heard  Englishmen,  in  Eng- 
land, asking,  with  evident  sincerity:  "What  have  the  Irish  to 
complain  of?  Ireland  is  one  of  the  best  governed  parts  of  the 
Empire.     She  is  under  British  law,  and  enjoys  an  equal  share  of 


Englishmen  Interested  in  fully  Knowing  tlie   Wrong.  5 

British  freedom.  Do  not  all  her  complaints,  all  this  chronic  unrest, 
these  periodical  uprisings  and  rebellions,  prove  that  the  fault  lies 
with  the  Irish  themselves,  that  they  are  unthrifty  and  ungovernable  ? 
that  they  are  controlled  by  a  creed  and  a  clergy  favorable  to  ignorance 
and  idleness,  who  encourage  neither  agriculture,  nor  commerce,  and 
are  themselves  the  cause  of  these  constantly  recurring  famines,  that 
plague  us  like  Asiatic  cholera,  and  cause  foreign  nations  to  cry  out 
against  us  ?  " 

Such  questions  and  cruel  words  containing  the  quintessence  of 
inveterate  prejudice,  of  blind  national  antipathy,  of  religious  bigotry, 
have  beeu  time  and  again  uttered  by  the  organs  of  English  public 
opinion.  They  can  be  read  in  the  editorial  cok^mns  of  the  leading 
London  journals  each  time  that  some  appeal  for  equal  justice  for 
Ireland  is  made  to  the  English  Parliament,  or  tliat  Irish  discontent 
assumes  some  new  and  startling  form.  Nay,  it  is  from  a  portion  of 
the  Irish  press  that  come  the  fiercest  denunciations  of  the  rebellious 
and  impracticable  spirit  of  the  majority  of  the  Irish  people.  In  the 
Capital  of  Ireland,  as  we  write  tbese  lines,  we  hear  the  popular 
leaders  and  representatives  in  Parliament  accused  of  the  treasonable 
design  of  separating  their  country  from  British  rule,  and  of  dis- 
membering the  Empire. 

What,  then,  is  the  real  cause  of  this  chronic  discontent,  agitation, 
disorder,  disregard  and  contempt  of  existing  laws  ?  There  must 
surely  be  a  cause.  All  right-minded  persons  in  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland  are  interested  in  discerning  and  clearly  understanding  the 
cause.  We  are  of  those  who  believe  that  the  Englishmen  of  our  day 
are  not  men  who  would  be  willing  to  perpetuate  the  reign  of  unrea- 
son and  injustice  inaugurated  by  their  fathers  in  another  age.  We 
know  too — and  that  is  one  firm  ground  of  hope  for  Ireland, — that  a 
great  party  is  fast  springing  up  and  gathering  around  itself  the  confi- 
dence of  the  popular  masses,  one  of  whose  avowed  aims  is  the 
restoration  to  Ireland  of  the  confiscated  right  of  self-government, 
and  the  right  as  well  of  using  all  lawful  means  for  the  development 
of  her  own  natural  resources. 


6  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

These  men  believe  Ireland  to  be  a  necessary  and  integral  portion 
of  the  triple-unity, — the  Three  Kingdoms, — which  constitute  the 
head  and  heart,  the  vital  and  ruling  power  of  the  great  British 
Empire.  They  believe  her  to  be  a  most  important  member  of  this 
body  politic ;  they  wish  her  to  be  a  sound,  healthy,  vigorous,  well- 
aifected  member,  instead  of  being  the  disaffected,  discontented,  dis- 
eased, and  dangerous  limb  that  she  is.  Hence  their  frank  recognition 
that  Irish  political  ills  are  serious  and  inveterate,  and  demand  a 
prompt  and  generous  treatment. 

It  is  to  this  growing  sentiment  in  England  that  we  address  our- 
selves. In  Ireland,  too,  are  generous  Irishmen,  differing  from  the 
majority  of  their  countrymen  in  religious  belief, — but  thoroughly 
convinced  of  the  justice  of  the  former's  claim  for  long  withheld  equal 
justice ;  thoroughly  one  with  them  in  the  faith  that  Ireland's  confis- 
cated nationality  shall  soon  be  restored,  and  that  with  the  restoration 
a  mighty  element  of  strength  will  be  added  to  the  Empire.  At  this 
moment  the  Irish  National  Party  is  led  by  one  of  these  men, — a 
Protestant  and'  the  descendant  of  an  Anglo-Irish  family.  Others 
belonging  to  the  same  race  and  the  same  creed,  men  of  great  minds 
and  greater  hearts,  distinguished  Clergymen  among  them,  lend  their 
names,  their  sympathy,  and  their  active  aid  to  the  great  movement 
which  enlists  the  hopes  of  the  Irish  Clergy  and  people,  and  of  some 
fifteen  millions  of  people  of  Irish  descent  outside  of  Ireland. 

It  is,  principally,  for  this  Greater  Ireland  that  this  book  has  been 
written,  this  Plea  addressed  to  all  civilized  peoj^les.  We  Irishmen  or 
descendants  of  Irishmen  all  over  the  globe,  wish  to  justify  to  our  own 
reason,  and  to  see  it  brought  home  to  the  reason  of  others, — that  our 
Cause  is  a  just  and  sacred  one, — that  the  Case  of  our  native  country — 
the  native  land  at  least  of  our  ancestors, — is  one  which  rests  on  irre- 
fragable historical  testimony,  on  the  eternal  principles  of  justice  and 
humanity  violated  in  our  regard. 

Irishmen  forced  to  seek  homes  for  themselves  and  their  dear  ones 
on  every  land  where  labor  has  its  reward,  and  where  industry  is 
fostered  and  lionored,  have,  in  spite  of  the  enormous  disadvantages 


Irish  Money  Spent  out  of  Ireland.  7 

of  their  early  training,  shown  both  intelligence  and  energy  in  com- 
peting with  their  fellow-workmen.  Their  success  has  been  such  as 
to  surprise  and  delight  their  well-wishers,  and  to  silence  their 
detractors.  No  one  of  them  emigrated  to  a  foreign  land  to  spend  a 
fortune  inherited  or  acquired  at  home.  They  went  to  build  up 
fortunes.  It  is,  and  has  long  been,  the  misfortune  of  the  laboring 
classes  in  Ireland  to  be  born  and  reared  in  a  country,  where  agri- 
culture is  practised  in  all  but  the  most  pitiable  forms,  where  manu- 
facturing industry  is  confined  to  a  few  localities,  and  even  then 
narrowed  by  religious  exclusiveness,  where  the  mechanical  arts  find 
no  encouragement  in  any  profitable  market.  Hence  the  helplessne&s 
of  the  great  masa  of  Irish  emigrants  wherever  there  was  a  great  field 
open  for  skilled  labor.  But  few,  comparatively,  among  them  had 
been  bred  craftsmen.  These  few,  however,  never  failed  to  be  among 
the  foremost  of  their  class ;  while  the  unskilled  were  not  slow  to 
make  of  their  opportunity  a  golden  one. 

Is  the  Celtic  race  at  home  to  be  held  accountable  for  this  back- 
wardness in  handicraft,  and  practical  industry?  Are  Irishmen  in 
Ireland,  and  because  they  are  Irishmen,  to  be  blamed  for  the  disap- 
pearance from  their  native  land  of  the  industrial  activity  which  has 
made  the  fortune  of  both  England  and  Scotland  ?  And,  in  replying 
indirectly,  at  least,  to  one  of  the  reproaches  cast  upon  the  inhabitants 
of  the  Emerald  Isle,  we  are  j)ointing  to  one  of  the  most  serious 
wrongs  which  English  selfishness  has  inflicted  on  the  Sister  King- 
dom,—the  extinction  of  all  Irish  industries  and  commerce  in  favor  of 
Metropolitan  Monopoly. 

Intimately  connected  with  this  injustice,  is  another:  that,  of  the 
millions  collected  from  the  wretched  tenantry  of  Ireland  either  by  the 
wholly-absentee  or  the  partly-resident  landlords,  not  one  half-million 
is  spent  for  the  benefit  of  the  country.  Ireland  is  the  only  country 
in  the  civilized  woi'ld  where  the  proprietors  of  the  soil  take  no  inter- 
est in  improving  it,  and  where  the  improvements  made  by  the  hard- 
working tenantry,  instead  of  belonging  to  themselves,  are  confiscated 
by  their  landlords.     Taking  this  undeniable  fact  in  connection  with 


8  The  Cause  of  Ireland 

the  title  on  which  the  landlords  of  Ireland  hold  their  property,  we 
find  a  complicated  case  of  lk justice  and  oppression  without  a  par- 
allel in  modern  times. 

There  has  been  a  long-standing  imputation  of  idleness  and  un- 
thriftiness  cast  upon  the  masses  of  the  Irish  people.  A  thousand 
times  it  has  been  demonstrated  that  this  enforced  idleness  is  the  re- 
sult of  such  relations  between  land  and  labor,  between  the  proprietors 
and  the  tillers  of  the  soil,  as  exist  nowhere  else;  that  it  is  produced 
by  land-laws  devised  originally  for  the  express  purpose  of  driving  the 
Irish  Papists  from  the  fields  taken  forcibly  from  them,  or  of  permit- 
ting them,  at  most,  to  occupy  and  cultivate  them  on  conditions  never 
imposed  on  a  Xegro  slave  by  a  master  careful  of  that  slaves  health 
and  life. 

This  Plea  must  establish  this  fact  once  for  all,  and  at  the  moment, 
when  in  Ireland,  the  relief  intended  by  the  Gladstone  land-legislation 
is  being  made  nugatory  by  the  Land-Courts  which  control  the  work- 
ing of  the  law,  and  when,  in  order  to  defeat  the  benefits  of  the  Fran- 
chise Eeform,  a  vigorous  eviction-campaign  has  begun,  crowding  the 
work-houses  with  thousands,  compelling  thousands  more  to  seek  of- 
ficial outdoor  relief, — and  thereby  disfranchising  every  man  of  these 
unfortunates. 

It  is  surely  time  that  the  American  People,  at  least,  should  be 
made  to  understand  that  the  same  iniquitous  confiscations  which  de- 
prived a  whole  nation  of  their  patrimony,  and  the  misgovernment 
which  sacrificed  to  the  benefit  of  English  manufactures  and  com- 
merce all  the  industries  and  foreign  trade  of  Ireland,  rendered  also 
mechanical  skill  impracticable  and  purposeless  in  Ireland,  made  it 
impossible  for  her  increasing  population  to  find  employment  and  a 
livelihood  at  home,  and  reduced  her  emigrants  in  foreign  lands  to  be 
"hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water." 

The  Irishmen  of  the  present  generation  bitterly  feel  the  slur  thus 
cast  upon  their  manhood;  and  that  bitterness  is  increased  a  hundred- 
fold by  the  consciousness  that  tlie  fault  lies  not  with  themselves,  but 
with  the  tyrannical  alien  domination,  which  has  systematically  wrought 


Irish  Husbandry  Swept  away  by  Cromwell.  9 

to  degrade  and  unman  them.  They  remember  the  time, — a  time 
coming  after  successive  periods  of  exterminating  warfare,  desolation, 
and  famine,  when  habits  of  thrift,  skilled  labor,  and  industry  had  so 
survived  among  the  sad  remnants  of  the  Irish  people,  that  their  ene- 
mies could  not  help  bearing  testimony  to  the  phenomenon.  In  a 
book  publislied  in  London  in  1G55,  by  the  then  Member  for  Kinsale 
in  the  English  Parliament,  the  author  all  too  courageously  denounced 
the  cruelty  and  unreason  of  "transplanting"  the  Irish  into  Connaught 
from  the  other  provinces.  Cromwell's  officers  and  soldiers  liad  been 
put  in  possession  of  the  millions  of  acres  given  them  by  the  Eight  of 
the  Sword.  It  was  urged  both  upon  tlie  fanatical  Parliament  and  the 
soldier-proprietors  themselves,  that  they  could  not  do  without  the 
Irish  in  cultivating  lands,  which  liad  been  purposely  wasted  and  al- 
lowed to  lie  fallow  for  years  in  order  to  starve  out  the  native  popula- 
tion. "The  soldiers" — the  writer  said — "had  need  of  the  Irish. 
They  liad  neither  stock,  nor  money  to  buy  stock,  nor  for  the  most 
part,  skill  in  husbandr}^  But  by  the  labors  of  the  Irish  on  their 
land,  together  with  their  own  industry,  they  might  maintain  them- 
selves, improve  their  lands,  and  inure  themselves  to  their  new  mode 
of  life.  Moreover,  there  were  few  of  the  Irish  peasardry  but  were 
skilful  in  husbandry,  and  more  exact  than  a?iy  English  in  the  hus- 
bandry jjroper  to  the  country;  few  of  the  women  but  were  sMlful  in 
dressing  hemp  and  flax,  and  making  woollen  cloth.  In  every  hundred 
men  there  were  five  or  six  masons  and  carpenters  at  least,  a^id  those 
more  ready  and  handy  in  building  ordinary  houses,  and  much  more 
skilful  in  supplying  the  defects  of  instruments  and  materials  than 
English  artificers.  They  have  always  been  known  as  uncommon  mas- 
ters of  the  art  of  overcotning  difficulties  by  cotitrivances.'*'' * 

Such  were  the  Irish  peasantry,  men  and  women,  230  years  ago. 
Did  the  English  Parliament  and  the  men  who  ruled  Ireland  for 
Cromwell  yield  to  the  remonstrance  of  this  writer,  himself  the  son  of 

*  "  The  Great  Case  of  Transplantation  in  Ireland  Discussed,"  &c.,  by  Vincent 
Gookin.  4to,  London,  1655;  as  quoted  by  Mr.  Prendergast,  "  Cromwellian  Settle- 
ment," p.  134. 


10  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

one  of  the  "planters"  of  James  I.,  but  born  in  Ireland,  and  not  to- 
tally blind  to  the  gifts  and  qualities  of  this  detested  Irish  race?  No; 
— far  from  it.  The  fever  of  hatred  caused  in  England  by  Cromwell's 
massacres  and  all  the  blood  shed  by  his  lieutenants,  was  at  its  height. 
Nothing  was  grateful  to  the  ear  of  Parliament  or  to  the  public  taste 
of  the  hour,  but  what  savored  of  the  purpose  of  utterly  exterminating 
these  "Irish  idolaters."  So  the  book  which  dared  to  suggest  the  re- 
taining of  these  "transplanted"  on  the  lands  forcibly  taken  from 
them,  was  condemned  to  be  burned  by  the  common  hangman! 

And,  since  the  year  1655,  what  have  the  Kulers  of  Ireland  and  the 
hostile  landed  aristocracy  created  by  Cromwell's  "Curse"  done  to  pro- 
mote industry,  to  stimulate  labor,  to  reward  the  skill  of  the  crafts- 
man, to  make  of  the  lot  of  the  laborer  on  Irish  soil,  or  the  home  of 
the  tenant,  a  something  superior  to  the  lot  of  the  Hottentot,  or  the 
hut  of  the  Greenland  Esquimaux  ? 

Again,  it  is  needful  that  this  Plea  should  go  forth  in  this  present 
year,  that  it  may  be  clearly  demonstrated,  that  the  disposition  of  the 
Irish  peasant  is  neither  murderous,  nor  vindictive,  nor  forgetful  of 
benefits  received,  nor  callous  to  the  noblest  and  tenderest  feelings  of 
humanity; — that  the  education  received  around  the  lowly  hearthstone 
of  the  poorest  Irish  home,  as  well  as  the  teaching  of  the  Irish  Pulpit, 
and  the  whole  influence  of  the  Irish  Priesthood,  instead  of  fostering 
the  angry  passions  begotten  by  antagonism  of  race,  by  the  oppression 
of  the  laboring  classes  by  the  Proprietors,  by  such  chronic  maladmin- 
istration of  the  law  that  it  is  only  known  to  the  people  as  a  ministra- 
tion of  crying  injustice;  but,  on  the  contrary,  that  the  atmosphere  of 
these  poverty-stricken  homes  is  one  of  gentleness  and  purit}^,  of  kind- 
ness and  charity,  and  that  nothing  but  the  influence  and  interference 
of  the  Priesthood  and  the  ])ower  exercised  by  the  religion  of  the  Cru- 
cified over  the  souls  tried  by  all  the  varieties  of  suffering,  could  pre- 
vent the  righteous  wrath  of  a  people  so  wronged  and  trampled  upon 
from  rising  like  a  mighty  flood  and  sweeping  away  all  barriers  and 
restraints. 

We  shall  see  in  the  course  of  our  argument  how  often,  since  the 


The  Irish  Character  in  its  True  Light.  11 

year  1162,  the  native  Irish  races  in  their  unselfish  trustfulness,  allowed 
the  foreign  settlers  or  conquerors  to  have  access  to  the  family  circle, 
never  failing  in  the  end  to  make  friends  of  enemies,  and  to  thor- 
oughly tame  and  assimilate  them.  We  have,  to  this  effect,  the  re- 
markable testimony  of  a  living  writer,  himself  a  Protestant,  and  hear- 
ing the  name  of  one  of  the  families  who  came  over  with  the  Anglo- 
Norman  invader.  Become,  like  so  many  others,  thoroughly  Irish 
himself,  no  prejudice  of  race  or  religion  can  blind  him  to  the  native 
beauty  of  the  Irish  character.  Speaking  of  the  Vincent  Gookin  just 
mentioned,  he  says: 

"Living  among  the  Irish,  he  had  as  usual  learned  to  love  them. 
He  had  appreciated  that  hearty,  affectionately  loyal  race  of  men, 
who  seem  to  be  fresh  from  nature's  hand,  and  to  belong  to  an  earlier 
and  uncorrupted  world.  His  land-hunger  had  been  appeased.  He 
was  possessed  of  considerable  estates.  He  had  tasted  of  the  social 
freedom,  the  easy  and  animated  life  of  an  unsubdued  people."* 

Elsewhere,  accounting  for  the  suddenness  with  which  the  first  Nor- 
man invaders  became  Irish  in  manners,  language,  laws,  and  life,  he  says: 

"In  the  spirited  character  of  the  Irish  the  new  settlers  found 
themselves  in  the  presence  of  a  people  of  original  sentiments  and  in- 
stitutions, the  native  vigor  of  whose  mind  had  not  been  weakened  by 
another  mind.  Nothing  surprised  the  invader  more  than  the  natural 
boldness  and  readiness  of  the  Irish  in  speaking  and  answering  even  in 
the  presence  of  their  chieftains  and  princes,  accustomed  as  the  invad- 
ers were  to  the  servile  habits  of  the  English,  produced,  as  Giraldus 
says,  either  by  long  slavery,  or  (more  probably,  Wadds)  by  the  innate 
dulness  of  men  of  Saxon  and  German  stock.  They  were  equally  as- 
tonished at  the  freedom  and  familiarity  of  the  Irish  gentry  with  their 
poorer  followers,  so  different  from  the  haughty  reserve  of  an  aristoc- 
racy of  foreign  descent  towards  the  lower  classes  of  a  subject  nation 
reduced  by  conquest  to  the  state  of  villeins  and  serfs.  Free  by  nature, 
the  Irish  were  followers  of  nature  and  freedom  in  all  things."  f 

*  John  P.  Prendergast,  "  The  Cromwellian  Settlement  of  Ireland,"  2d  ed.  (Dub' 
lin),  p.  135.  +  Ibidem,  p.  11, 


12  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

When,  therefore,  we  find  a  people  by  nature  so  gentle,  so  amiable, 
so  open  to  all  the  sweetest  charities  of  social  intercourse,  breaking 
forth  into  acts  of  savage  vindictiveness,  the  obvious  inference  is  or 
ought  to  be  that  there  must  exist  some  extraordinary  provocation. 
This  also  we  have  to  establish  in  our  Plea. 

As  to  the  charge  of  ignorance  cast  so  unreflectingly  on  the  Irish 
people,  and  the  still  graver  charge  of  fostering  ignorance,  made 
against  their  religious  guides,  we  might  be  content  to  refer  our  kind 
readers  to  a  future  chapter,  where,  unless  we  are  sadly  mistaken,  the 
tables  are  turned  upon  the  accuser.  Suffice  it  here  to  remark  that 
when  it  was  made  by  the  English  Parliament  a  crime  to  the  Irish 
Catholic  to  teach  or  to  be  taught  in  conformity  with  the  principles  of 
his  own  creed,  the  reproach  of  ignorance  or  ignorantism  comes  with 
a  very  ill  grace  from  the  English  Protestants  who  made  the  abomi- 
nable law. 

"They  divided  the  nation  into  two  distinct  parties,"  says  Edmund 
Burke,  "  without  common  interest,  sympath}^,  or  connection.  One  of 
these  bodies  was  to  possess  all  the  franchises,  all  the  property,  all  the 
education.  The  other  was  to  be  composed  of  drawers  of  water,  and 
cutters  of  turf  for  them."  * 

Such  is  one  utterance  among  many  condemnatory  of  this  su- 
preme and  inconceivable  injustice  toward  a  Christian  people,  from 
one  of  the  greatest  men  of  all  time,  another  of  these  men  of  Anglo- 
Irish  blood,  born  and  educated  among  that  warm-hearted  Celtic  race, 
fascinated  by  their  many  lovable  and  generous  qualities,  and  indig- 
nant at  the  unmerited  wrongs  heaped  upon  them. 

The  one  great  crime  of  the  Irish  people, — of  the  native  Celtic 
race  whom  Strongbow  and  Henry  II.  found  in  possession  of  Ireland, 
— and  of  their  descendants  down  to  the  time  of  the  Commonwealth, 
was  that  the  land  belonged  to  them  by  right,  and  that  the  English' 
wanted  it.  The  struggle  between  the  two  races, — the  crimes,  the 
wrongs,  the  accumulated  injustice  of  seven  centuries  and  a  quarter 


*  "Works,"  Boston  Ed.  1807,  vol.  iii.,  p.  452. 


Tlie  Struggle  for  the  Land  come  to  a  Crisis.  13 

were  inspired  \>\,  and  are  the  fruit  of,  one  great  moving  force,  Land- 
Hunger  in  the  English  breast.* 

This  land-hunger, — so  far  as  the  possession  and  division  of  Irish 
land  could  appease  it, — obtained  all  that  it  craved  for  at  the  final 
settlement  under  William  and  Mary.  But  the  Transplanted  and 
dispossessed, — the  descendants  of  the  former  tillers  of  the  soil  and 
herdsmen,  of  the  wandering  Creaghts  and  wood-kerne, — kept  what 
hold  they  could  of  the  soil.  Little  less  than  miraculous  is  the  fact 
that  any  of  these  persecuted,  hunted,  decimated  people  should  have 
survived  the  awful  massacres,  the  exterminating  warfare  carried  on 
against  them  "to  root  them  out "  of  their  native  soil  !  But  the  roots 
resisted  fire  and  sword,  though  plied  again,  again,  and  again,  century 
after  century. 

They  still  keep  "their  grip"  of  the  soil.  And  now  the  question 
is:  Which  class  shall  survive — the  lords  of  the  soil  or  its  tillers?  the 
landed  Aristocracy  created  by  "Cromwell's  Curse"  on  L'eland,  or  the 
oppressed,  proscribed,  half -starved,  and  cruelly  wronged  tenants  and 
farm-laborers  of  Ireland  ? 

We  shall  not  prophesy  here.  We  have  only  to  say, — that  the 
whole  question  on  which  our  Plea  turns  is  the  question  of  land  in 
Ireland. 

It  has  been  a  struggle  for  land  between  Irishman  and  Englishman 
from  the  beginning.     It  is  so  still. 

We  have  only  to  show  that  Eight  and  Justice  were  on  the  side  of 
Ireland  in  this  long  battle;  that  Might  and  Wrong  were  on  the  side 
of  England. 

To  approach  the  question  of  Eight  in  this  matter,  and  to  qualify 
one's-self  for  pronouncing  a  conscientious  verdict,  we  must  consider 


*  The  London  Times,  commenting  in  its  issue  of  Nov.  29,  1861,  on  a  Resolution 
of  the  Government  of  India,  opening  up  the  entire  soil  of  India  to  English  settlers, 
remarks  that  "  the  Resolution  ....  appeals  to  one  of  the  strongest  passions  in  the 
human  breast,  the  love  of  land.  In  most  nations  this  feeling  is  strong,  but  hi  the 
British  population  the  love  of  land  is  powerful  in  the  extreme.  Our  colonial  wars 
are  simply  wars  for  land.  We  tight  for  land  in  New  Zealand,  at  the  C...pe.  and 
wherever  we  settle."     Quoted  by  Mr.  Prendergast. 


14  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

what  botli  the  Land  and  the  People  were  before  England  put  forward 
her  claim  to  the  possession  of  the  one  and  the  obedience  of  the  other; 
under  what  pretence  of  justice,  religion,  or  policy,  she  began  her  pro- 
cess of  expropriating  the  native  owners  of  the  soil;  what  methods  she 
employed  in  obtaining  and  holding  the  Land,  and  in  dealing  with  the 
dispossessed  proprietors. 

These  inquiries  will  lead  us  to  the  further  Question:  What  Eng- 
land has  done  with  the  Land  and  the  People  thus  conquered  by  brute 
force  ? 

Our  conclusion  must  be:  What  does  she  purpose  to  do?  What 
does  her  best  interests  counsel  her  to  do  ? 


PART  FIRST. 


THE  COUNTEY  AND  THE  PEOPLE— BEFORE  THE  ENG- 
LISH INVASION. 

Importance  of  not  confounding  the  appearance  of  Ireland  as  she  is 
to-day,  with  the  Ireland  of  the  Celtic  period. 

TT  is  very  important,  in  order  to  judge  aright  of  the  evils  which 
the  English  domination  has  inflicted  on  the  Land  and  the  Nation, 
that  we  should  have  a  correct  notion  of  their  condition  in  the  year 
llfiO.  when  the  Anglo-Norman  adventurers  landed  at  Wexford.  Did 
they  find  on  their  arrival  a  country  as  wild  and  uncultivated  as  was 
New  England  at  the  landing  of  the  Puritan  Pilgrims?  Were  the 
Irish  of  the  12tli  century  as  uncivilized  as  the  Indian  tribes  of  Massa- 
chusetts and  Rhode  Island?  Or  was  the  coming  of  these  foreigners, 
like  a  heavy  frost  in  midsummer,  a  calamity  which  marred  the 
development  of  a  previous  civilization,  blighting  all  the  promise  of 
an  advanced  springtide  ? 

That  Ireland  was  not  the  moral  wilderness  certain  English 
Avriters  would  have  the  world  believe,  is  certain  beyond  all  question- 
ing. That  lier  people  were  not  the  savages  the  English  popular 
mind  pictures  to  itself  even  at  the  present  day,  is  equally  certain. 
The  denominations  of  "Wild  Irish"  and  "Mere  Irish,"  helped  to 
cover,  during  centuries,  the  enormities  of  the  Conquerors,  and  to 
justify  to  English  public  opinion  the  most  terrible  crimes  against 
humanity  and  civilization. 

Nothing  could  be  more  misleading  than  to  judge  of  the  Ireland 

(15) 


16  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

of  1169,  by  a  hasty  survey  of  the  Ireland  of  1885.  Travelers  from 
America  are  exposed  to  form  very  wrong  conclusions  by  a  few  days 
or  a  few  weeks  spent  in  the  country,  satisfied  with  the  imperfect 
glimpses  obtained  from  the  windows  of  a  railroad-carriage,  or  a  day's 
journey  on  an  open  car  to  the  chief  points  of  interest  in  the  South, 
West,  and  North  of  Ireland,  or  a  stay  of  a  few  days  in  the  principal 
cities  to  visit  the  public  edifices,  the  libraries,  and  museums. 

To  the  superficial  examiner  the  Ireland  of  our  day  affords  very 
few,  if  any,  indications  of  what  the  country  and  the  nation  were  in 
the  time  of  St.  Patrick,  or  that  of  the  Second  Henry.  Let  us, 
therefore,  look  both  at  the  Land  and  at  its  Celtic  population,  as  the 
most  trustworthy  historians  describe  them. 


I. 

Ieeland  iisr  THE  Year  of  Christ  433. 

npHE  Island  was  oovered,  in  its  length  and  breadth,  with  forests. 
So  was  it  found  by  the  first  colonists,  whatever  their  name,  who 
reached  this  westernmost  extremity  of  Europe  after  the  Dispersion, 
The  stately  grow^th  of  timber  was  favored  by  the  genial  mildness  of 
the  climate,  and  by  the  perpetual  humidity  derived  from  the  tepid 
vapor-laden  atmosphere  of  the  Gulf-Stream  coming  here  in  contact 
with  the  cold  air  of  the  northern  seas.  And  so  long  as  the  ancient 
inhabitants  were  left  in  possession  of  their  lands,  they  not  only 
abstained  from  a  wasteful  destruction  of  their  native  woods,  but  were 
careful  to  foster  their  growth  wherever  needed.  Of  this  we  shall 
have  evidence  further  on. 

St.  Patrick  and  his  missionary  companions,  at  their  arrival,  in 
432,  found  these  primeval  forests  interspersed  with  broad  plough- 
lands  and  pasturages,  which  bore  the  crops  and  fed  the  large  herds 
and  flocks  of  a  half-agricultural,  half-pastoral  people.  Their  habi- 
tations, like  most  of  those  in  Continental  Europe,  at  that  period, 
were  always  erected  in  secure  and  easily  defensible  positions,  some- 
times on  the  fortified  summit  of  a  hill,  or  on  a  steep  acclivity,  or  in 
islands  on  their  numerous  beautiful  lakes,  and,  in  some  instances, 
they  were  built  on  strong  piles  driven  into  the  lake  itself,  as  were  the 
Lake  Dwellings  discovered  and  described  in  our  day  by  scientists  in 
Switzerland  and  elsewhere. 

For,  before  St.  Patrick's  time  as  well  as  then,  Ireland  was 
exposed  to  visits  from  sea-rovers,  as  Avell  as  to  regular  invasion  from 
some  of  the  wandering  tribes  impelled  continually  by  the  terrible 
2  (17) 


18  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

land-hunger  from  the  teeming  soil  of  Asia  toward  the  West. 
Besides,  Ireland  itself,  though  apparently  inhabited  by  people  speak- 
ing but  the  one  Keltic  tongue,  had  traditions  and  bore  traces  of 
having  received,  at  different  intervals,  colonies  of  wliich  the  last 
come  would  displace  or  subdue  the  earlier.  And,  moreover,  the 
tribal  communities  which  then  divided  the  Island  among  themselves, 
even  if  they  did  coalesce  occasionally  for  defensive  purposes,  or 
assemble  for  certain  annual  festivities,  lived  a  very  independent  life. 
Then,  unhappily,  as  long  afterward,  the  great  tribal  chieftains  of 
one  province  made  war  on  each  other.  And  the  inferior  chiefs  imi- 
tated those  above  them.  So  that,  if  the  inhabitants  of  the  sea-coast 
and  the  interior  could  feel  secure  against  attacks  from  without,  they 
were  never  safe  from  the  raids  of  their  neighbors. 

And  yet,  nothing  of  what  authentic  history  relates  of  the  bicker- 
ings and  Avars  of  the  5th  century  in  Ireland,  would  authorize  the 
conclusion,  that  the  Celts  of  that  age  were  a  savage  and  blood-thirsty 
race.  On  the  contrary,  the  very  attraction  which  Patrick,  escaped 
from  his  bondage  in  Ireland,  felt  for  that  kindly,  gentle  race  whom 
he  had  left  in  Pagan  darkness.  There  is  no  instance  in  the  history 
of  Christianity  of  a  people  converted  to  the  belief  in  the  doctrines  of 
the  Gospel  and  the  practice  of  its  divine  morality,  with  so  little  of 
bloodshed  or  violence.  Tlie  nature-worship  brought  by  the  ancient 
Kelts  from  the  cradle  of  their  race  in  Asia,  and  additions  made  to  it 
later  by  the  Phenician  traders  and  the  colonies  founded  by  them 
along  the  coast,  had  a  deep  hold  of  the  peojole.  They  were  a  part 
of  the  dear,  mysterious,  sacred  land  of  Asia  to  which  all  looked  back 
with  a  reverential  and  filial  love,  and  a  part  as  well  of  the  national 
life  in  their  island-home  in  the  Far  West.  The  Druidical  teaching 
with  its  mystic  rites,  its  solemn  celebrations,  its  occasional  awful 
sacrifices,  and  the  perfect  system  of  Brehon  law,  which  regulated 
every  relation  of  public  and  private  life  in  connection  with  the 
national  worship, — could  not  be  set  aside  and  utterly  abandoned 
without  a  struggle. 

At  any  rate,  the  struggle  was  virtually  a  bloodless  one.     A  sim- 


Plienician  Landmarhs  in  Ireland.  19 

pie,  peaceful,  pastonil  race,  intelligent  withal  and  keenly  alive  to  the 
sense  of  the  true,  the  morally  beautiful,  the  Godlike  in  life  and  i^rac- 
tice, — soon  opened  their  minds  and  hearts  to  the  light  of  the  Gospel, 
illustrated  especially  by  the  saintly  examples  of  its  apostles,  and  the 
virtues  of  their  first  followers.  When  Patrick  died,  in  a  patriar- 
chal old  age  in  492,  the  entire  nation  had  embraced  the  Christian 
faith. 

This  fact  itself  and  its  attendant  circumstances  afford  an  argument 
in  favor  of  the  people.  Presently  we  shall  examine  the  structure  of 
the  Celtic  society  which  St.  Patrick  found  in  the  Island,  and  the  feat- 
ures of  the  principal  social  institutions.  A  word  about  the  intercourse 
then  held  by  Ireland  with  the  rest  of  the  world,  in  the  first  centuries 
of  the  Christian  Era,  and  of  its  effect  on  the  state  of  civilization  among 
them,  will  not  be  out  of  place  here. 

Under  the  name  of  lerne  the  island  had  been  well  known  to  all 
the  nations  of  the  Mediterranean  sea-board.  Long  before  Eome  was 
founded  the  ships  of  Aradus,  Tyre,  and  Sidon,  had  found  their  way 
to  the  eastern  and  southern  shores  of  Spain.  They  had  founded 
Gades  (the  modern  Cadiz),  and  erected  the  beautiful  city.  They 
had  ascended  the  broad  and  deep  bosom  of  the  Boetis,  and  founded, 
or,  rather,  enlarged,  beautified,  and  strengthened  Hispalis  (the  mod- 
ern Seville).  They  had  explored  the  western  shore  of  the  Peninsula, 
from  Lisbon  to  Cape  Finisterre,  learning  from  the  Kelts  of  Galicia, 
if  they  had  not  already  learned  it  from  the  Kelts  of  Andalusia, — that 
long  before  their  arrival,  a  colony  of  the  Gael  had  settled  on  the  ut- 
termost verge  of  Europe,  on  that  leme,  the  last  spot  of  land  on  which 
the  sun's  light  rested,  before  the  great  luminary  disappeared  from  the 
eyes  of  men. 

One  spot,  at  least,  on  the  southern  coast  of  Ireland  still  bears  a 
name  which  points  to  a  Phenician  settlement  or  trading  station. 
Baltimore  {Baal- Ti- More)  'the  Great  House  of  Baal,' keeps  its  an- 
cient title  in  spite  of  the  long  lapse  of  ages  and  of  all  the  revolutions 
and  destructions  which  its  broad  bay,  and  the  adjoining  archipelago 
of  '  Carbery's  hundred  isles,'  have  witnessed.     Most  beautiful  was  the 


20  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

aspect  of  islands  and  mainland,  when  the  Phenician  galleys  entered 
the  roadstead,  and  cast  anchor  within  the  shelter  of  that  encircling 
amphitheatre  of  wooded  hills.  They  built  a  mart  for  commerce 
aronnd  the  rocky  point  on  which  later  The  O'Driscoll  reared  his  Cas- 
tle, and  there,  most  probably,  stood  the  tower  on  whose  summit  Baal's 
sacred  fire  burned  for  many  a  long  year  afterward.  They  ascended 
the  Hen  up  almost  to  the  walls  of  the  modern  Skibbereen,  but  which 
in  the  remote  past,  was  only  one  of  the  populous  centres  of  a  fruitful 
region.  The  neighboring  isles  were  not  then  the  treeless,  wind-swept, 
poverty-stricken  wastes  which  Mount  joy  and  Carew,  Broghill  and 
Cromwell  afterwards  made  them.  No  portion  of  the  sunny  Galician 
coast  in  Spain,  not  even  the  Italian  Kiviera  and  the  lovely  shores  of 
Sorrentnm,  no,  not  even  those  more  enchanting  still  of  their  own  Phe- 
nicia,  afforded  to  these  explorers  of  the  deep  a  series  of  more  restful, 
fresh,  and  blissful  scenes  than  were  presented  by  the  succession  of 
broad  estuaries,  embowered  harbors,  grand  mountain  scener}^,  and  a 
climate,  which,  at  that  period,  must  liave  seemed  one  perpetual 
spring-tide. 

For,  as  science  with  its  careful  observations  has  taught  us,  the 
mean  temperature  of  both  winter  and  summer  in  the  whole  northern 
hemisphere,  has  been  gradually  getting  lower  for  ages.  We  can, 
therefore,  picture  to  ourselves  what  the  climate  of  Ireland  must  have 
been  3,000  3^ears  ago,  when  the  warm  waters  of  the  Gulf-stream  and 
its  tepid  atmosphere  were  more  in  harmony  with  the  ever-lasting  soft- 
ness of  the  native  air,  and  when  the  luxuriant  woods  and  ever-green 
pastures,  could  have  made  the  new-comers  fancy  that  this  was,  in 
truth,  the  Isle  of  the  Blessed. 

Further  south,  and  nearer  still  to  the  ocean-pathway  followed  by 
these  venturesome  seafarers,  is  another  lovely  river,  the  modern 
Blackwater,  forming  at  its  mouth  the  once  much-frequented  harbor 
of  Youghal,  and  across  the  peninsula  which  protects  town  and  har- 
bor from  the  fury  of  the  Atlantic  storms,  is  the  lofty  promontory  of 
Ardmore  with  another  broad  bay  between  its  precipitous  cliffs  and 
the  gently  sloping  hills  more  southward  still.     Few  are  the  traces  now 


A  Fruitf'id  Soil  for  the  Plienician  Culture.  21 

left  of  the  magnificent  forests  of  oak  whicli  clad  promontory,  hills 
and  plain.  Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  axe  was  busily  plied  along  these 
shores,  when  in  reward  of  the  blood  he  spilt  like  water,  Elizabeth  be- 
stowed npon  him  Youghal  with  43,000  acres,  and  the  ancient  monas- 
teries founded  by  the  Geraldines.  Many  and  many  a  ship  bore  the 
felled  timber  to  France  and  Spain.  But  in  the  palmy  days  of  Plieni- 
cian commerce,  and  when  the  Mithraic  or  Stellar  worship  of  the  an- 
cient Kelt  held  its  sway  all  over  the  land,  Ardmore  was  a  centre  of 
Druidical  learning.  Near  the  Eound  Tower  on  the  hillside,  and 
within  the  roofless  sanctuary  of  St.  Declan's  Cathedral,  they  will  show 
you  the  ancient  stones  with  the  Ogham  characters,  which  are  the  old- 
est known  to  Western  Europe.  Were  these  anterior  to  the  Plienician 
Alphabet  ? 

It  was  not  an  infertile  soil,  at  any  rate,  to  which  the  Plienician 
traders  brought  their  intellectual  culture,  with  their  commercial 
wares.  We  give  these  bold  navigators,  so  far  advanced  in  all  the  in- 
dustrial arts,  credit  for  the  invention  of  the  alphabet.  It  would  be 
hard  to  establish  this  in  a  satisfactory  maniier.  There  is  a  tradition 
among  the  Jews  that  one  of  the  ante-diluvian  patriarchs,  in  prevision 
of  the  coming  destruction  of  mankind,  inscribed  on  stone  monuments 
a  history  of  the  world  down  to  his  own  time.  The  Greeks  attribute 
the  invention  to  one  of  their  own  race.  And  then,  we  have  to  ac- 
count for  the  traditions  of  the  Babylonians,  Egyptians,  Indians,  and 
Chinese.  The  ancient  Kelts  came  from  that  same  Asia  which  gave 
birth  to  all  these  civilizations  and  literatures.  They  were  not  sav- 
ages, but  a  civilized  race,  when  they  turned  their  faces  westward, 
only  stopping  when  the  limitless  Ocean  left  them  no  further  lands  to 
conquer  or  explore.  Was  there  between  the  Ogham  characters  and 
the  Phenician  Alphabet  any  connection? 

Few  as  are  the  relics  of  Keltic  literary  and  artistic  genius  spared 
to  us  by  the  destruction  successively  wrought  all  over  Ireland  by  • 
Heathen  Dane,  Christian  Norman,  by  English  Catholic  Kings  and 
Lord-Deputies  in  pre-Eeformation  times,  as  well  as  by  Tudors,  Stu- 
arts, Roundheads,  and  the  "Protestant  Ascendency"  since  then, — 


22  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

these  few  suffice  to  prove  that  St.  Patrick  and  his  companions  found, 
on  their  arrival,  a  civilized  people  in  Ireland. 

The  archaeological  treasures  of  the  Eoyal  Irish  Academy  in  Dub- 
lin, those  of  Trinity  College  Library,  of  the  British  Museum,  and  of 
other  public  and  private  collections  in  the  Three  Kingdoms  demon- 
strate this  truth  beyond  the  possibility  of  Doubt.  The  "Book  of 
Kells"  is  nearly  contemporary  with  St.  Patrick.  The  pictorial  art 
which  it  reveals  bears  unmistakable  traces  of  Phenician  and  Eastern 
origin.  With  all  its  imperfections  it  is  a  marvel  in  its  w^ay.  And 
yet,  it  was  only  one  work  among  liundreds, — among  thousands,  we 
might  say  without  venturing  too  far, — which  might  have  been  found 
in  the  monastic  homes  of  learning. 

We  shall  see  in  another  place  how  Keltic  art  may  have  been  im- 
proved by  contact  with  the  Phenician.  Did  civilization  go  back- 
ward in  the  Island  when  Sidon  and  Tyre  and  Byblos  fell,  and  the 
Carthaginians  possessed  themselves  of  Gades  and  Hispalis,  without 
continuing  the  traditional  voyages  of  their  more  nobly  ambitious 
kinsmen?  AYe  can  only  say  that  St.  Patrick  found  the  people  of 
lerne  or  Hibernia,  as  the  Eomans  called  it,  not  only  worthy  of  the 
Gospel,  but  ready  to  obey  the  mighty  impulse  which  the  new  doctrine 
was  to  give  to  their  entire  social  system. 

The  population  of  the  Island  w^as  divided  into  tribes  or  Septs. 
These  were  composed  of  groups  of  families  bearing  the  name  of  their 
common  ancestor,  or  some  patronymic  indicating  their  common  de- 
scent. And  this  name  designated  the  district  or  territory  allotted  to 
them  or  conquered  originally  by  the  founders  of  the  Sept.  All  over 
the  Island,  in  432,  the  Keltic  or  Gaelic  was  the  only  language  spoken. 
There  is,  therefore,  every  reason  to  think  that  the  people  were  of  the 
same  stock. 

Their  tribal  organization  seemed  to  be  a  consequence  of  this  com- 
munity of  origin.  The  entire  structure  of  society  among  them  indi- 
cated a  patriarchal  and  primitive  state.  The  family  was  the  social 
unit.  The  father's  absolute  authority  resembled  that  of  the  head  of 
a  family  in  Kome  in  the  early  ages  of  the  Great  Eepublic.     The  head 


EUmants  of  Naliunal  Organization  and  Life.  23 

of  the  Tribe  wns,  i^robably,  at  first,  the  nearest  in  direct  descent  to 
the  common  ancestor.  When  the  necessity  oi"  offensive  and  defensive 
warfare  compelled  the  tribesmen  to  choose  the  foremost  in  valor^  in 
ability,  and  influence,  then  the  chieftaincy  became  elective.  At  any 
rate  they  had,  at  a  very  early  date,  a  national  code  of  laws,  fixing  the 
relations  of  all  the  members  of  the  community  toward  each  other, 
regulating  the  whole  civil  and  religious  life  of  the  tribe  and  the  na- 
tion, establishing  public  officers  to  keep  sacredly  the  written  code, 
the  genealogy  of  each  family  and  the  records  of  the  entire  Tribe, 
Judges  to  administer  the  law,  and  schools  in  which  both  the  minis- 
ters of  religion  and  those  who  were  to  be  in  their  turn  the  lawyers 
and  judges  of  the  Tribe  might  acquire  their  professional  knowledge. 

Let  us  look  a  little  more  closely  into  all  the  conditions  of  society 
in  the  Ireland  of  the  5th  century.  To  very  many  persons  wliat  is  re- 
lated of  them  even  by  the  most  reliable  historians,  seems  like  the 
half-fancies  half-realities  of  mythological  lore.  Still  are  they  no  fan- 
ciful inventions  on  which  rests  our  knowledge  of  Brehon  Law  and  the 
institutions  derived  from  it. 

Looking  at  the  Irish  people  of  St.  Patrick's  age,  we  find  them,  in 
many  respects,  so  divided,  that  one  could  scarcely  call  this  agglomer- 
ation of  Septs,  with  their  loose  provincial  governments,  by  the  name 
of  that  compact  organic  whole  we  call  a  nation. 

Indeed  the  Septs  and  their  territorial  divisions  might  appear  at 
first  sight  to  be  rather  a  loose  aggi*egation  of  organisms,  than  one  well 
organized  body,  with  a  recognized  head  and  dependent  members,  act- 
ing in  subordination  for  all  the  purjxtses  of  a  common  social  life. 
Yet,  though  Ireland's  remote  insular  position  did  not  compel  her 
Septs  about  the  middle  of  the  5th  century,  to  form  a  solid,  perma- 
nent union,  acting  like  one  man  against  enemies  from  without,  the 
biographers  of  St.  Patrick  and  other  native  writers  of  the  century 
next  following,  attest  that  the  Irish  had  then  their  solemn  national 
assemblies.  It  was  at  one  of  these  that  the  Apostle  made  his  most 
successful  appeal  to  the  reason  of  his  hearers,  and  in  favor  of  the  doc- 
trines of  Christianity.     There  was  an  obstinate,  though  not  a  bloody. 


24  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

struggle  between  the  popular  idolatry  with  its  powerful  and  influen- 
tial institutions  and  the  new  creed,  preached  by  strangers,  inculcating 
self-denying  and  self-sacrificing  virtues,  as  well  as  belief  in  mysteries 
far  transcending  the  natural  sphere  of  reason. 

Nevertheless  the  religion  of  the  Crucified  prevailed.  It  had  be- 
come the  national  religion  ere  the  death  of  St.  Patrick  (492).  And 
the  law  of  the  Gospel,  admitted  as  the  law  of  the  true  life  by  the 
entire  Irish  people,  was  incorporated  with  the  Brehon  Law. 

We  are  not  left  in  doubt  respecting  these  important  facts.  The 
Senchus  Mok  still  remains  to  us,  like  the  "Book  of  Kells,"  as  a 
monumental  witness,  almost  mii'aculously  preserved  through  the  long 
and  savage  warfare  waged  against  all  that  belonged  to  the  "  Mere . 
Irish,"  all  that  could  recall  the  Catholic  civilization  of  the  first  age  of 
Christianity  in  Ireland. 

What,  then,  is  tliis  SencJitis  Morf  It  is  a  compilation  of  the  an- 
cient Brehon  Laws  as  thus  modified  by  Christianit}', — the  old  and  the 
new  being  fitted  together  and  harmonized  under  the  united  superin- 
tendence of  th^  Apostle  and  of  the  converted  Brehons,  Bards,  and 
Druids.  From  the  middle  of  the  5th  century  to  the  year  1613,  under 
James  I.,  the  Senchus  Mor  regulated  the  public  life  and  the  private 
dealings  of  the  Irish  people.  In  tlie  year  last  mentioned,  Sir  John 
Davies,  the  King's  Attorney  General,  with  the  Lord  Deputy,  Sir 
Arthur  Chichester,  made  the  circuit  of  Ulster,  holding  assizes  in 
various  localities,  superseding  the  Brehon  by  the  English  LaAv,  and 
compelling  the  people  to  deliver  up  their  ancient  manuscript  codes. 

Happily  the  great  Code  itself  has  survived  the  vandalism  of  that 
age  and  the  following.  There  is  a  singularly  pregnant  passage  in  the 
Introduction  to  the  Body  of  the  Work  itself.  Evidently  the  writer 
wished  to  express  the  great  truth  taught  by  St.  Paul,  again  and  again 
declared  by  Doctore,  Popes,  and  Councils,  and  so  solemnly  pro- 
claimed in  1870  by  the  Council  of  the  Vatican,  that  God  is  the 
creator  of  the  natural  and  supernatural  orders,  that  from  Him  come 
to  us  both  the  Law  of  Nature  and  the  Law  of  Grace,  and  that  the 
same  Spirit  who  spoke  to  the  holy  men  of  old  is  the  same  who  in- 


Land  in  the  Age  of  St.  Patrick.  25 

spired  the  Apostles  and  writers  of  the  New  Law.  "How  the  judg- 
ment of  true  nature" — so  the  text  reads — "which  the  Holy  Ghost 
had  spoken  through  the  mouths  of  the  Brehons  and  just  poets  of  the 
men  of  Erin,  from  the  first  occupation  of  the  island  down  to  the 
reception  of  the  faith,  were  all  exhibited  by  Dubhtach  (the  Chief 
Brehon)  to  Patrick,  what  did  not  clash  with  the  word  of  God  in  the 
written  law  and  in  the  New  Testament,  and  with  the  consciences  of 
the  believers,  was  confirmed  in  the  Law  of  the  Brehons  by  Patrick, 
and  by  the  ecclesiastics  and  chieftains  of  Erin.  For  the  Law  of 
Nature  had  been  quite  right,  except  the  Faith  and  its  obligations, 
and  the  harmony  of  the  Church  and  the  people." 

The  Catholic  theologian  will  have  no  difficulty  in  seizing  the 
sense  of  this  passage,  in  spite  of  the  obscurity  induced  by  a  literal 
rendering.  It  is  clear  enough,  however,  that  this  Harmony  between 
the  Christian  precepts  and  the  old  Heathen  legislation  was  the  joint 
work  of  "Patrick  and  the  Brehons,"  together  with  "the  Ecclesiastics 
and  Chieftains  of  Erin."  Here  are  the  elements  of  nationality  drawn 
and  bound  together  by  the  mighty  forces  of  a  common  faith,  a  com- 
mon jurisprudence,  a  common  language,  and  a  common  descent. 
The  Senchus  Mor  is  thus  an  eloquent  witness  to  the  ancient  nation- 
ality and  high  civilization  of  the  Irish. 

Long  before  St.  Patrick,  moreover,  the  Celts  of  Ireland  had 
codified  separately  their  criminal  law.  About  the  middle  of  the  3d 
century  (350)  was  compiled  the  Book  of  Aicill.  These  compilations, 
with  other  literary  Celtic  remains  collected  from  different  points  of 
the  British  Isles  and  Continental  Europe,  are  now  the  object  of 
scientific  study,  and  bring  more  and  more  distinctly  into  light  the 
polity,  literature,  and  arts  of  a  people  represented  as  a  myth. 

How,  then,  was  the  possession  of  land,  the  very  basis  of  national 
existence,  regulated  by  the  Brehon  Code  ?  This  question  has  not  a 
little  importance,  as  bearing  upon  the  crying  "impositions"  practised 
upon  the  Celtic  population  of  Ireland,  in  all  the  changes  in  land 
proprietorship  and  tenure  afterward  made  by  the  English. 

As  we  have  already  briefly  stated,  each  Sept  held  their  lands  in 


26  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

common.  It  was  only  when  the  chieftaincy  became  hereditary  in  the 
same  family,  that  the  liberal  portion  of  land  allotted  to  the  Chief, 
began  to  be  viewed  by  himself  or  his  kinsmen  in  the  liglit  of  what 
we  should  now  call  "jiroperty."  These  encroachments  on  the  rights 
of  the  Sept,  and  the  prescriptions  of  the  Brehon  Law,  came  in  with 
the  practice  of  Feudalism  in  Ireland  by  the  Anglo-Xorman  nobles. 
But,  even  under  the  Tudors  and  Stuarts,  when  the  great  Irish 
Chieftains  were  driven  into  rebellion,  that  their  lands  might  be 
seized  as  forfeited  to  the  Crown,  the  Irish  protested  against  the 
injustice  thus  done  to  the  members  of  the  Sept  or  Septs  subject  to 
the  attainted  Chief,  on  the  ground,  that,  according  to  Irish  Law,  the 
lands  did  not  belong  to  the  chief  to  be  by  him  disposed  of,  or  for- 
feited by  any  act  of  his. 

Lands  were  also  allotted  to  the  Druids  for  religious  purposes  and 
their  own  maintenance,  without,  however,  ceasing  to  belong  to  the 
Sept.  When  the  Druidical  Corporations  were  superseded  by  the 
Christian  Clergy,  the  lands  allotted  to  the  former  Avere,  naturally, 
assigned  to  the  maintenance  and  use  of  the  latter.  Lai'ge  grants  are 
mentioned  as  made  to  St.  Patrick  by  the  Kings  or  Overlords,  and  by 
various  inferior  chieftains.  Grants  and  assignments  were  also  made 
for  the  support  of  the  numerous  Churches  with  their  respective 
clergy,  established  and  multiplied  all  over  the  Island  by  the  Apostle. 
He  was  anxious  that  every  Sept  throughout  the  land  should  be  well 
provided  with  the  spiritual  ministrations  of  the  new  faith.  The 
people  were  a  pastoral  people  living  in  dwellings  that  were  in  con- 
formity with  their  occupations,  their  manners,  and  the  needs  of  the 
climate.  The  Creaghts,  or  that  portion  of  them  specially  occupied 
in  pasturing  the  herds  and  flocks,  followed  with  their  families  their 
charge  as  these  changed  their  pasturage  in  summer  and  winter. 
Patrick,  who,  during  his  first  captivity  in  Erin,  had  been  employed 
as  a  herdsman,  knew  well  what  the  needs  of  this,  the  greater  portion 
of  the  population,  were,  and  provided  chapels  and  priests  for  them, 
whithersoever  they  had  to  migrate.  Xo  part  of  his  flock  was  thus 
neglected  by  this  good  shepherd.     The  priests,  whose  numbers  the 


Magnificent  Provision  for  Hospitality.  27 

holy  man  thus  multiplied,  were  men,  who  wished  to  emulate  the 
devotion  of  himself  and  his  saintly  companions.  The  Irish  people 
were  a  people  of  brothers;  the  first  priests,  no  matter  what  their 
birth,  were  of  the  people,  and  devoted,  heart  and  soul,  to  this 
people  of  fervent  neophytes. 

The  whole  Island,  therefore,  before  the  close  of  the  5th  century, 
swarmed  with  churches,  each  one  of  which,  served  by  zealous  priests, 
became  a  centre  of  incredible  religious  activity.  The  priests  kept 
up  the  literary  traditions  of  their  predecessors,  the  Druids,  and  not 
only  made  of  their  churches  schools  of  Christian  Doctrine,  but  of 
their  houses  schools  of  secular  knowledge. 

More  than  this: — St.  Patrick,  trained  in  the  monasteries  founded 
by  St.  Martin  near  Tours  in  France,  in  the  great  Monastic  Schools  of 
the  Island  of  Lerius  founded  by  St.  Honoratus,  and  who  had  after- 
ward seen  the  semi-monastic  rule  given  in  Milan  to  the  clergy  by  St. 
Ambrose,  and  flourishing  in  Rome  itself  in  the  dwelling  of  the  Popes, 
— gave  to  the  Irish  clergy  that  same  semi-monastic  form.  At  any 
rate  Monastic  Houses  of  men  and  women  arose  and  flourished  in  every 
direction. 

Each  Sept,  as  Christianity  thus  penetrated  every  home  and  heart, 
and  as  Church  and  Monastery  and  School  sprang  up,  like  the  sudden 
growth  of  some  marvelous  spring-tide, — made  a  generous  allotment  of 
lands  for  each  of  these  institutions.  The  Monasteries  and  the  great 
and  world-renowned  Monastic  Schools  thus  founded  in  the  territory 
of  each  Sept,  were  considered  as  a  part  of  the  Sept  itself.  The  lands 
set  apart  for  their  maintenance,  though  consecrated  to  sacred  uses, 
were  not  so  entirely  given  to  God,  as  to  be  alienated  and  lost  for  ever 
to  the  Sept.  The  Irish  Tribes  never  yielded  up  their  altiim  dominium 
in  Church  property. 

Another  public  institution  for  which  the  Pagan  Irish  provided 
most  liberally  was  Hospitality.  This,  of  course,  was  too  much  in  con- 
formity with  the  spirit  and  letter  of  the  Gospel,  not  to  be  taken  up 
and  fostered  by  St.  Patrick  and  his  successors.  The  function  of  dis- 
pensing hospitality  in  the  name  of  the  Sept  was  deputed  to  some  of 


28  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

their  noblest  men.  These  were  called  Hospitalers  (Irish,  Biatacli). 
The  office  always  deemed  to  be  sacred  in  pagan  times,  was  held  to  be 
much  more  so  by  the  Christian  Irish,  both  because  ail  the  beautiful 
examples  of  patriarchal  hospitality  shone  out  like  bright  pictures 
from  the  pages  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  because  the  New  Testament 
enjoined  its  practice  as  one  of  the  functions  of  Christian  Charity. 
When  the  Eighth  Henry  suppressed  and  seized  upon  Keligious 
Houses  all  over  Ireland,  he  found  of  these  noble  establishments, — an 
unique  institution  even  among  Christian  nations, — 90  in  Connaught, 
90  in  Ulster,  120  in  Leinster,  and  1030  in  Munster, — in  all  1,330! 
"For  the  Irish  knew  (to  quote  the  words  of  Dr.  Lynch  in  his  Cam- 
hreiisis  Eversus  *)  and  obeyed  the  admonition  of  the  Apostles  and  the 
precept  of  St.  Peter,  that  Christians  should  observe  hospitality  one 
towards  another,  without  murmuring;  and  also  of  St.  Paul,  '  Hospi- 
tality do  not  forget,  for  by  this  some,  not  being  aware  of  it,  have  en- 
tertained angels,' — namely,  Abraham  and  Lot  among  others." 

Eight  royally,  therefore,  did  these  great-hearted  Celts  provide  for 
all  public  needs.  But  where,  in  St.  Patrick's  time,  was  there  a  pub- 
lic provision  made  for  the  poor?  The  answer  is  a  very  simple  one: 
in  St.  Patrick's  age,  in  Ireland  there  was  no  class  at  all  resembrnig 
our  ]X)or.  The  land  was,  literally,  teeming  with  milk  and  honey. 
For,  besides  the  innumerable  herds  of  kine  which  formed  tlie  chief 
wealth  of  the  people,  there  were  laws  protecting  and  regulating  api- 
culture or  the  rearing  of  bees  and  the  production  of  honey, — hydro- 
mel  or  a  mixture  of  water  and  honey  being  the  chief  beverage  among 
all  classes.  And,  further  still,  the  nation  was  a  nation  of  brothers, 
among  whom  every  man  and  woman  born  on  Irish  soil  had  their 
places  at  the  hearthstone  of  their  own  families.  A  people  who  so 
generously  provided  for  the  entertainment  of  the  wayfarer  and  the 
stranger,  were  not  likely  to  forget  the  infirmities  or  the  need  of  their 
own  near  flesh  and  blood. 

But,  while  thus  displaying  a  wise   and  liberal  munificence,  the 

*  Vol.  ii.,  pp.  243-47,  Edition  of  Celtic  Society,  Dublin,  1850. 


Various  Blemenfs  of  Future  Progress.  29 

Septs,  tlie  whole  people,  were  tenacious  of  their  right  to  the  land. 
They  looked  upon  that  right  as  undisputed  and  imprescriptible.  It 
was,  together  with  their  loyalty  to  the  Faith  of  St.  Patrick,  the  one 
thing  which  they  never  would  yield,  or  barter  away,  or  bargain  for 
through  their  long  national  misfortunes.  It  is  the  one  thing  to  which 
they  still  hold  in  their  heart  of  hearts,  for  the  restoration  of  which 
they  are  willing  to  wait,  to  suffer  and  to  struggle,  in  the  undying 
hope  that  Eight  shall  at  length  prevail  over  Might. 

The  principal  public  institutions  which  existed  in  each  tribe  were 
those  for  education  and  hospitality.  The  spirit  of  Christianity  after- 
wards enlarged  and  perfected  them;  but  they  were  so  admirable  in 
themselves  that  they  easily  obeyed  the  laws  of  the  highest  progress. 
The  Druids  and  Bards  were  at  the  head  of  the  schools  of  Ireland, 
when  the  first  Christian  missionaries  landed  there.  Secular  and  re- 
ligious learning  were  combined  and  imparted  by  the  same  masters. 
We  find,  under  Elizabeth,  the  Brehon  Schools  bestowing  as  much  as 
they  were  permitted  to  do,  of  university  education,  to  the  Irish  youth 
who  were  driven  with  their  masters  into  the  wilderness — the  deep 
forest,  the  bog,  and  the  mountain-cave.  The  extraordinary  ardor 
with  which  the  youth,  if  not  the  manhood  of  all  Ireland  flocked  to 
the  schools  established  by  St.  Patrick  and  his  companions,  proves  how 
powerfully  the  appetite  for  intellectual  culture  had  been  developed  in 
the  nation  before  their  arrival. ' 

The  other  great  tribal, — we  should  say  national, — institution,  was 
the  exercise  of  public  hospitality.  This  proves  the  frequent  and 
brotherly  intercourse  which  obtained  between  Sept  and  Sept,  between 
what  we  might  call  province  and  province.  Strangers  coming  at  any 
time  and  no  matter  in  what  numbers,  were  entertained  at  the  public 
expense.  In  order  that  hospitality  should  be  exercised  without  stint 
in  the  name  of  the  tribe,  the  province,  and  the  whole  nation,  a  por- 
tion of  the  public  lands  were  set  aside,  proper  buildings  erected  and 
furnished,  and  one  of  the  most  distinguished  tribesmen  selected  to 
preside  over  the  establishment,  cultivate,  develop,  and  administer  the 
estate  set  apart  for  this  important  purpose. 


30  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

These  Hospitality  Houses  became  still  more  important  as  the  fame 
of  the  great  Monastic  Schools  of  Ireland  afterward  increased,  and  as 
scholars  and  others  flocked  in  great  numbers  from  Britain  and  the 
Continent  to  these  great  nurseries  of  leai'ning  and  piety. 

To  this  large,  liberal,  and  progressive  spirit  of  these  ancient  Celts 
no  slight  incentives  were  brought  by  the  commerce  which  the 
Phenicians,  even  in  their  decline,  contrived  to  keep  up  with  Ireland, 
and  which  the  maritime  nations  inheriting  the  commercial  spirit  of 
Tyre  and  Sidon,  maintained  with  Spain  and  Gaul  and  the  Western 
Isles.  The  Irish  themselves  loved  the  sea.  Their  large  craft  made 
warlike  expeditions  to  Britain  and  the  Continent  and  as  far  east  as 
the  Mediterranean, — just  as  in  later  times  they  visited  Iceland, 
Greenland,  and  the  nearest  coasts  of  Xortli  America.  From  this 
mutual  intercourse  learning,  the  fine  arts,  and  every  branch  of 
industry  must  have  received  a  beneficial  impulse. 

Just  as  the  traders'  ship  which  bore  from  the  near  port  of 
Cffisarea  the  fugitive  disciples  of  the  martyred  St.  James,  with  the 
precious  body  of  their  master,  to  the  coast  of  north-western  Spain, 
up  the  magnificent  Bay  of  Arosa  to  the  shores  near  which  arose 
Compostella,  even  so  from  Galicia  merchantmen  sailed  in  those  ages 
to  the  westernmost  land  of  the  Gael,  and  entered  that  Bay  of  Galway, 
whose  very  name  bears  witness  to  the  ancient  brotherly  intercourse 
between  East  and  West.  There  is  another  witness  to  the  existence 
of  a  thriving  commerce  in  these  far-off  times,  and  that  is  the  Great 
Walled  Highway  from  Galway  to  Dublin.  .  .  .  Strange,  that  men 
should,  at  this  very  moment,  busy  themselves  with  the  idea, — a 
noble  and  fertile  one, — of  opening  a  mighty  ship-canal  along  that 
same  great  highway  of  commercial  travel  in  ancient  times, — whicli, 
as  the  Twentieth  Century  is  about  to  aawn,  should,  by  the  divine 
right  of  ISTature,  become  the  shortest  path  for  the  commerce  of  two 
worlds,  nay,  the  commerce  of  the  entire  globe.  The  ship-canals  of 
Panama  and  Nicaragua  will  draw  to  them  the  commerce  of  Further 
Asia  and  the  Pacific.  From  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  the  pathway  of  com- 
merce lies  straight  to  Galway  Bay.     "Who  will  open  a  short  and  safe 


Social  Hierarchy.  31 

foad  for  the  mercantile  fleets  of  the  next  century  from  Gal  way  to 
Dublin,  the  coast  of  Britain,  and  the  European  continent?  England 
will  surely,  ere  another  quarter  of  a  century  has  passed,  find  it  her 
interest  to  spend  her  millions  in  such  enterprises  as  this. 

That  the  highways  of  commerce  were  for  Celtic  Ireland  the  high- 
ways of  civilization,  we  have  ample  proof,  No  one  can  visit  the 
treasury  of  the  Eoyal  Irish  Academy,  and  examine  carefully  the 
pure  gold  ornaments  collected  there,  collars  (or  torques),  rings, 
bracelets,  magnificent  shawl-  and  mantle-pins  or  fibulfe,  and  recall 
the  gold  orname]its  just  discovered  in  the  home  of  the  Atridse  or 
among  the  ruins  of  Troy,  without  comparing  Irish  art  with  the  far- 
off  contemporaneous  art  of  Greece  and  Asia.  Alas,  in  unfortunate 
Erin  the  graves  of  the  dead  have  been  again  and  again  rifled  of  their 
treasures.  The  golden  ornaments  our  museums  can  boast  of,  have 
been  yielded  up  by  bog  and  morass  or  ploughed  with  the  soil  on 
the  field.  So  is  it  with  the  prehistoric  weapons  of  the  ages  of  bronze 
and  iron,  spearheads,  knives,  hatchets,  swords,  as  well  as  with  other 
relics  of  the  remote  past. 

Before  the  arrival  of  the  Christian  Missionaries  in  432,  the  Irish 
Septs  had  followed  their  great  chief,  Niel  of  the  Nine  Hostages,  on 
warlike  expeditions  not  only  against  the  neighboring  island  of 
Britain,  but  against  the  Gallo-Eomans  on  the  adjoining  continent. 
His  progeny,  the  O'Neills,  formed  a  kind  of  sacred  stock  in  the  eyes  of 
the  Irish,  and  were  the  hereditary  overlords  or  kings  of  Ulster.  In 
the  other  great  territorial  divisions  some  one  of  the  most  warlike  and 
powerful  Septs  managed  to  obtain  by  free  choice  or  force  the  local 
overlordship.  Certain  it  is,  that  the  rank  of  supreme  ruler  of  the 
whole  island  never  became  the  appanage  of  any  one  family.  Down 
to  the  12th  century  both  the  provincial  kings  and  the  monarch  o^ 
all  Ireland  were  elective. 

The  democratic  form,  based  on  the  Sept  or  tribal  organization, 
prevailed  not  only  in  each  Sept,  but  in  the  groups  of  Septs  forming  a 
province,  and  in  the  assembled  nation. 

Taken,   together  with  the    densely  wooded    condition    of    the 


32  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

country,  and  the  lack  of  cohesion  between  the  Septs  and  groups  of 
Septs, — this  state  of  things  offered  but  little  prospect  of  union  or 
unity  for  defensive  or  offensive  purposes.  We  shall  have  evidence  of 
this  organic  weakness  in  the  ineffectual  and  straggling  efforts  made 
to  repel  the  first  Danish  invasions,  as  well  as  in  the  apparent  listless- 
ness  with  which  the  nation,  as  a  whole,  afterward  resisted  the  settle- 
ment and  encroachments  of  the  Anglo-Normans. 

However,  the  biographers  of  St.  Patrick  unite  in  saying,  that,  in 
his  day,  Leoghaire  (pronounce  Laijrie)  seems  to  have  had  all  the 
power  and  influence  of  supreme  ruler  over  the  whole  Island. 

The  warlike  passion  which  took  possession  of  some  Princes  and 
made  them  lead  their  followers  on  some  conquering  expedition  or 
plundering  raid,  only  flamed  out  on  rare  occasions.  Their  military 
prowess  effected  nothing  permanent  either  abroad  or  at  home.  The 
nation  were  contented  and  happy  within  their  own  insular  position. 
Like  the  Twelve  Tribes  of  Israel  within  their  national  territory, — they 
had  a  nobler,  higher  purpose  in  their  existence,  the  culture  of  all  the 
elements  of  CWistian  civilization  and  social  progress.  They  too  were 
to  be  the  Salt  of  the  earth. 

The  person  elected  to  this  overlordship,  whether  in  each  province 
or  in  the  whole  Island,  was  assigned  certain  lands  and  certain  rights 
of  tribute  in  each  Sept  in  the  Province,  and  in  each  province  in  the 
Kingdom,  as  the  case  might  be.  But  whatever  lands  were  thus  as- 
signed or  whatever  tax  or  tribute  permitted  to  be  levied, — it  was  well 
defined  and  understood  that  both  land  and  tribute  were  only  given 
for  the  use  of  the  ofl&ce  and  the  life  of  the  office-holder.  No  part 
of  the  land  of  the  Sept  could  be  alienated  to  even  a  king.  And  as 
there  existed  no  State  properly  so  called,  there  was  no  national  do- 
main, no  State  property,  apart  from  the  sacred  and  inviolable  patri- 
mony of  the  Septs  themselves. 

These  great  Chieftains,  even  when  the  rank  they  held  was  hered- 
itary in  one  line,  did  not  always  transmit  their  dignity  from  father 
to  son.  The  Sept  was  jealous  of  its  right  to  choose  its  chief;  and  he 
was  only  acknowledged  as  such,  even  after  election,  when  he  was  con- 


strong  Tribal  Affection  for  the  CJiief.  33 

ducted  solemnly,  in  a  full  convention  of  the  Tribesmen,  to  the  tradi- 
tional site  on  the  hill-side,  and  seated  on  the  sacred  stone  on  which 
his  predecessors  had  been  installed.  Christianity  in  due  time  gave 
additional  solemnity  and  sacredness  to  these  installations.  But  they 
retained  the  same  forms,  substantially,  so  long  as  it  was  possible  to 
appoint  a  chief  recognized  by  any  Sept  in  Ireland,  so  long,  at  least, 
as  a  single  Sept  was  left  entire  and  without  being  broken  into  frag- 
ments, and  scattered  throughout  the  land. 

Only  when  thus  installed  on  the  sacred  stone,  and  proclaimed 
by  his  tribesmen,  could  King  or  Chief  call  himself  The  O'Neill,  or 
The  O'Donnell,  or  The  MacCarthy  More,  The  O'Brien,  The  Mac- 
Murrogh,  or  The  O'Connor.  These  revered  names  of  the  common 
ancestor,  or  benefactor,  of  the  national  hero,  defender,  or  conqueror, 
was  the  magic  title  which  appealed  to  the  respect  and  loyalty  of  the 
Celtic  tribesmen.  The  titles  equivalent  to  King  were  not  used  by  the 
Irish  until  a  late  period,  and  even  when  used,  the  word  rigli,  or  arcl- 
righ,  had  not  the  magic  power  of  the  simple  title  of  "The  O'Neill" 
or  "The  O'Connor,"  &c. 

Far  stronger  was  the  claim  which,  within  each  particular  Sept, 
the  chief  had  upon  his  clansmen  or  members  of  the  Sept.  This,  no 
matter  how  numerous  and  dominant,  was  in  the  eyes  of  all  who  bore 
the  tribal  name,  one  family  descended  from  one  Avell  known  ancestor, 
whose  representative  the  chief  was.  The  homage  and  obedience  paid 
him  were  a  mixture  of  brotherly  love  and  filial  devotion.  The  High- 
land Clans  of  Scotland  long  preserved  a  similar  organization;  and 
"Walter  Scott  has  faithfully  described  the  sentiments  entertained  by 
the  clansmen  toward  their  chief.  In  Ireland,  unhappily,  not  a  ves- 
tige has  been  left  subsisting  of  these  patriarchal  organisms  out  of 
which  Nature  intended  that  nations  of  brothers  should  groAv,  like 
forests  out  of  the  same  genial  soil,  fostered  by  the  same  sunlight  a]";d 
warmth,  watered  by  the  same  fertilizing  showers,  each  tree  protecting 
its  neighbor  from  the  storm,  and  all  arching  their  arms  together 
overhead  to  protect  from  the  too  ardent  summer-sun  and  from  the 
frosts  of  the  winter  the  young  undergrowth. 


34  The  Cause  of  Ireland 

One  peculiar  custom,  that  of  fosterage,  witli  its  inviolable  bonds  of 
affection  between  the  child  adopted  and  the  members  of  its  adopted 
family,  grew  out  of  the  mingled  reverence  and  love  felt  in  the  Irish 
Septs  toward  the  person  of  the  Chief  and  his  immediate  family.* 
However  the  sentiment  which  hallowed  this  bond  in  the  beginning 
and  made  it  stronger  than  death,  may  have  been  mixed  up  with  the 
calculations  of  self-interest  on  one  side  or  on  both  it  was  a  beautiful 
and  admirable  custom.  The  Chief  could  always  feel  sure  of  the  at- 
tachment of  every  member  of  the  Sept,  but  his  foster-parents  and 
their  children  would  at  any  moment  lay  down  their  lives  for  him. 
Of  this  we  have  many  striking  and  most  touching  examples  in  Irish 
history, — even  where  the  child  given  in  fosterage  belonged  to  the 
hostile  Anglo-j^Iorman  race. 

Christianity  grafted  on  this  same  robust  trunk  of  brotherly  love 
between  tribesmen  the  custom  of  gossipred,  that  is  the  spiritual 
afiEinity  arising  between  God-father,  God-mother  and  tlie  child  held 
by  them  over  the  baptismal  font  to  receive  the  second  birth.  The 
mystic  bond  of  spiritual  parentage  thus  contracted  by  the  Sponsors 
toward  the  baptized  infant,  extended  in  a  relative  sense  toward  the 
child's  parents.  Indeed  gossipred  became  a  powerful  link  of  friend- 
ship between  families;  and  to  make  its  influence  wider,  noble  or 
wealthy  families  often  had  for  each  child  several  sponsors  of  both 
sexes,  thus  binding  to  themselves  and  to  the  fortunes  of  the  child  as 
many  powerful  persons  as  they  could.  And,  to  the  conscientious 
Christian,  this  tie  was  no  less  sacred  and  inviolable  than  that  formed 
by  fosterage. 

"The  Irish  custom  of  fosterage," — says  Mr.  Prendergast, — "was 
in  the  nature  of  wardship;  but  the  object  being  to  make  the  j^oung 
chief  the  beloved  of  his  followers,  he  was  brought  up  in  tlie  bosom  of 
the  family  of  his  foster-parents.  .  .  .  Nursed  up  in  a  sense  of  his 
own  importance^  he  became  the  proud  and  spirited  head  of  the  clan, 

*  In  his  novel  of  "  The  Fair  Maid  of  Perth,"  Scott  has  left  a  memorable  exam- 
ple of  this  devotion.  The  foster-father  and  his  numerous  sons  perish  to  the  last 
man  to  protect  the  life  of  their  cowardly  chief. 


National  Sports  and  Pastimes.  35 

their  pride  and  their  joy,  and  bound  to  his  foster-family  and  they  to 
him  by  ties  of  affection  stronger  than  tliose  of  blood."  * 

The  earliest  English  writers  on  Ireland  speak  in  terms  of  great 
praise  of  the  strength  of  body  and  beauty  of  limb  conspicuous  among 
the  Celts  of  their  time.  Nor  was  there,  in  this  respect,  any 
difference  between  the  sons  and  daughters  of  the  tribesman,  what- 
ever his  rank  and  occupation,  and  the  children  of  the  highest  Chief. 
Besides  the  fact  of  a  common  descent,  the  nurture  and  life  of  the 
children  of  all  classes,  were  much  the  same.  In  infancy  the  limbs  of 
the  babe  were  not  subjected  to  the  tight  bandaging  so  customary 
even  in  the  most  civilized  lands.  Nature,  with  the  tender  care  and 
watchfulness  of  the  mother,  was  allowed  to  mould,  develop,  and 
invigorate  freely  the  limbs  of  childhood.  Living  for  the  most  part 
in  the  open  air,  caring  little  for  the  changes  of  the  weather,  giving 
unrestrained  scope  to  the  natural  passion  of  youth  for  all  kinds  of 
healthful  exercises,  and  living  on  a  diet  simple,  abundant,  and 
nutritious,  the  ancient  Irish  grew  up  beautiful  in  features,  fair  and 
strong  of  limb,  capable  of  every  feat  of  strength  and  agility.  Their 
powers  of  endurance  even  in  the  time  of  the  Nuncio  Rinciccini 
(1645),  were  a  subject  of  admiration  to  this  dignitary  and  his  Italian 
Chancellor. 

Athletic  sports  among  them,  as  among  the  Greeks,  a  kindred 
race,  were  in  the  greatest  honor.  To  this  day  the  Irish  race  all  over 
the  world  feel  especial  pride  in  keeping  up  such  of  these  sports  as 
were  the  delight  of  their  forefathers.  The  great  city  of  New  York 
has  her  CJan-na-Gael,  with  their  yearly  athletic  festivals,  contests, 
and  prizes.  Ireland,  too,  awakening  from  the  lethargy  and  discour- 
agement begotten  of  the  disappointment  of  so  many  fond  hopes,  and 
the  prostration  caused  by  seemingly  endless  suffering,  is  at  this 
moment  reviving  the  much-loved  national  pastimes  of  other  genera- 
tions. Tipperary,  famed  in  all  past  history  for  her  stalwart  sons,  is 
taking  the  lead.     She  is  only  keeping  up  her  own  traditions. 

*  "  Cromwellian  Conquest,"  p.  20,  21. 


36  The  Cause  of  Ireland, 

"There  is  a  very  ancient  custom  here  (county  of  Tipperary)," 
says  Arthur  Young,  writing  more  than  a  hundred  years  ago, — "for  a 
number  of  country  neighbors  among  the  poor  people  to  fix  upon 
some  young  woman  that  ought,  as  they  think,  to  be  married.  They 
also  agree  upon  a  young  fellow  as  a  proper  husband  for  her.  This 
determined,  they  send  to  the  fair  one's  cabin,  to  inform  her  that  on 
the  Sunday  following  she  is  to  be  horsed,  that  is,  carried  in  triumph 
on  men's  backs.  She  must  then  provide  whiskey  and  cider  for  a 
treat,  as  all  will  pay  her  a  visit,  after  Mass,  for  a  hurling  match. 
As  soon  as  she  is  horsed,  the  hurling  begins,  on  which  the  young 
fellow  appointed  for  her  husband  has  the  eyes  of  all  the  company 
fixed  on  him  :  if  he  comes  off  conqueror,  he  is  certainly  married  to 
the  girl;  but  if  another  is  victor,  he  as  certainly  loses  her,  for  she  is 
the  prize  of  the  victor."  * 

It  is  a  wonder  that,  a  century  ago,  and  when  the  Penal  Laws 
were  just  beginning  to  relax  somewhat  of  their  intolerable  rigor,  our 
"poor  people"  (for  were  they  not  all  ground  down  to  a  common  level 
of  poverty  ?)  found  heart  to  practise  this  ancient  game  of  hurling. 
Even  Arthur  Young,  fair-minded  though  he  was,  "little  knew  the 
hearts  full  of  the  noblest  fire  that  beat  under  the  poorest  rags  in 
Ireland,  nor  the  unconquerable  mind  of  the  inhabitants  of  those  frail 
dwellings  of  wattle  covered  with  collops  or  long  stripes  of  turf.  Here, 
however,  after  500  years  of  conquest,  dwelt  an  unsubdued  people, 
impatient  of  English  laws,  much  more  of  suppression  and  servi- 
tude." t 

The  hurling-match,  the  carrying  the  bride  in  triumph,  the 
contest,  and  the  bestowal  of  the  fair  prize  on  the  victor,- — all  this  is 
but  an  echo  of  the  far-off  centuries,  when  two  neighboring  Septs 
were  wont  to  assemble  to  contest  the  prize  in  Athletics;  and  when 
the  noble  maiden,  who  had  been  chosen  queen  of  the  feast,  bestowed 
her  hand,  as  a  prize,  on  the  victor.     Our  Celtic  forefathers  only  live 


*  "  A  Tour  in  Ireland  in  the  years  1776,  1777,  1778,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  250. 
t  "  The  Cromwellian  Conquest,"  p.  330. 


National  Celebrations.  37 

in  the  Irish  peasantry  of  our  day.     Noble,  gallowglass,  and  Creaght, 

under  the  crushing  level  of  British  bondage,  have  been  ground  down 

to  this  equality.     But  the  souls  of  the  fathers  seem  to  pass  into  the 

sons,  with  the  faithful  and  undying  memories  of  the  past. 

Goldsmith,  who  saw  what  Arthur  Young  saw,  and  who,  as  an 

Irishman,  mourned  over  the  desolation  of  his  native  land,  thought, 

sadly,  that  tyranny  at  home  and  wholesale  emigration  would  all  too 

soon  put  an  end  to 

These  healthful  sports  that  graced  the  happy  scene, 
Lived  in  each  look,  and  brightened  all  the  green, 
These,  far-departing,  seek  a  kinder  shore. 
And  rural  mirth  and  manners  are  no  more. 

Thank  God,  "the  unconquerable  mind"  still  remains,  at  home 
and  abroad  ! 

It  would  be  equally  interesting  and  instructive  to  complete, — 
from  the  very  imperfect  description  given  us  by  the  biographers  of 
St.  Patrick  of  the  great  festival  at  Tara  about  Eastertide, — tlie 
picture  of  this  national  assemblage  :  kings,  princes,  chiefs,  with  the 
elite  of  the  various  Septs,  and  the  Druids,  Bards,  Brehons,  and 
Shannahs,  all  arrayed  in  their  official  robes,  with  the  prescribed 
colors, — warriors  and  civilians,  every  order  well  represented.  We 
should  have  the  scene  in  the  Eoyal  Hall  at  Tara,  and  the  scene  out- 
side. The  multitude  outside  awaiting  in  darkness  the  first  kindling 
and  flashing  forth  of  the  King's  Fire  from  the  hill-top,  and  the 
people  far  and  wide  expecting  the  signal  to  illuminate  in  one  instant 
the  entire  Island.  And  then,  all  of  a  sudden,  the  appearance  of  the 
Paschal  Fire  lit  by  St.  Patrick,  because  it  is  Holy  Saturday,  the  eve 
of  the  Resurrection,  when  the  Light  of  the  "World  burst  from  the 
Sepulchre,  and  the  earth  shook  to  its  centre,  conscious  of  the  victory 
over  Death  and  Sin. 

Then  there  is  a  terrible  commotion  in  Tara, — King  Leogaire 
rushing  with  his  war-chariots  to  avenge  the  insult  offered  to  him  by 
the  strangers ;  and  the  struggle  which  followed  between  the  two 
Religions  thus  suddenly  brought  into  open  conflict  in  presence  of  the 
Chiefs  and  representatives  of  the  whole  nation. 


38  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

It  is  an  historical  scene  worthy  the  pen  of  some  great  scholar,  and 
the  brush  of  some  great  painter. 

There  is  another  assemblage, — that  in  which  the  nation,  now 
converted  to  Christianity,  met  to  adopt  tlie  Senchus  Mor,  the  great 
Celtic  Code  of  our  forefathers,  put  in  harmony  with  tlie  teaching 
and  prescriptions  of  the  Gospel.  We  have  the  Book,  like  the  Ark 
of  the  Ancient  Alliance  between  Pagan  Wisdom  and  Eevealed 
Truth.  It  is  a  monument  that  speaks  eloquently  for  the  civilization 
of  these  distant  ages.  But  who  will  describe  the  memorable  da}^, — 
when  the  chosen  men  of  all  the  Families  and  Septs  in  Ii-eland  met 
together  to  accept  the  Book  thus  prepared,  and  to  pledge  themselves 
to  obey  its  injunctions  ? 

Had  the  ancient  Druidical  or  Mithraic  ritual  of  the  Celts  lent  its 
consecration  to  such  a  solemnity  as  this,  we  know  what  blood  might 
have  stained  the  altar  and  stamped  the  Book  with  its  awful  sanction. 
But  there  stood  Patrick,  the  Pontiff  of  a  purer  religion  and  a  worship 
more  worthy  of  the  God  to  whom  man  liveth  and  dieth.  The  Sacri- 
fice which  he  offered  up  on  that  da}^,  to  invoke  the  divine  blessing  on 
the  People  and  its  Eulers,  on  the  Law  and  the  Nation,  reminded 
all  present  of  the  Victim  of  Calvary,  who  is  the  End  and  the  Sanction 
of  all  laws  human  and  divine. 

As  the  Apostle  of  Ireland,  robed  in  the  sacred  vestments  of  his 
office,  stood  on  that  Altar,  surrounded  by  his  troops  of  bishops, 
priests,  and  inferior  ministers,  Avhile  kings,  princes,  warriors,  and  the 
adoring  multitudes  knelt  or  stood  reverent,  far  and  near,  satisfied  to 
see  and  follow  the  movements  of  their  High  Priest  and  Parent, — it 
must  have  reminded  these  ardent  students  of  the  Scriptures  of 
Moses  at  the  foot  of  Mount  Nebo,  closing  his  mission  of  teaching  and 
liberation,  by  giving  solemnly  to  his  people  the  Book  of  the  Law. 

Who  will  fill  up  from  authentic  history  the  details  of  the  picture 
faintly  outlined  here? 

The  ancient  Irish  in  these  days  of  national  independence,  of  un- 
limited plenty  in  a  land  sparsely  inhabited  and  teeming  with  all  the 
fruits  of  natural  fertility  and  assiduous  culture,  of  fervent  religious 


Laws  of  Iiilierltance,  39 

faith  and  domestic  purity  and  happiness,  gave  themselves  up  to  thej 
enjoyment  of  all  that  is  most  lawful  and  self-improving  in  the  social 
affections.  They  were  warm-hearted  and  ardent  by  nature;  and 
where  religion  widened,  deepened,  and  hallowed  for  them  the  legiti- 
mate channels  for  all  these  strong  alfectious,  such  a  people  in  such 
conditions  must  have  advanced  rapidly  in  true  civilization, — that 
which  rests  on  the  culture  of  the  heart  and  the  elevation  of  the 
moral  sentiments. 

In  these  patriarchal  families,  where  the  father's  authority  was 
absolute,  the  law  of  primogeniture  had  no  existence.  It  did  not 
regulate  the  tenure  or  transmission  of  power  in  the  Sept  or  in  the 
State;  it  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  transmission  or  tenure  of 
property  in  the  family.  Whatever  right,  in  the  course  of  time  and 
in  return  for  special  services,  a  family  might  have  acquired  to  certain 
lands,  these,  as  well  as  the  movable  property  in  herds  and  flocks,  &c., 
were  to  be  equally  divided  among  all  the  sons  of  the  deceased  accord- 
ing to  the  law  of  gavelkind.  This  law  was  the  common  law  both  in 
England  and  in  Ireland,  while  the  two  countries  were  under  Celtic 
rule.  It  moreover  enacted  that  when  a  brother  died  childless,  his 
land  was  to  be  equally  divided  among  his  brothers. 

Another  feature,  in  connection  with  the  transmission  of  property 
and  political  power,  was  the  custom  of  Tanidry.  As  the  free 
election  of  the  members  of  the  Sept  determined  who  should  hold  the 
chieftaincy,  so  to  prevent  high  office  and  the  power  it  conferred  from 
becoming  an  heirloom,  and  thereby  a  danger  to  the  common  free- 
dom, the  electors  chose  generally  at  one  and  the  same  time  both  the 
Chief  and  his  Tanist,  or  successor.  The  Tanist  was  selected  among 
the  members  of  the  Chief's  own  family.  The  tribesmen  were  sup- 
posed to  choose  the  man  most  fitted  in  every  way.  If  the  son  of  the 
Chief,  like  Saul  in  Israel,  surpassed  all  the  others  in  merit,  then  the 
suffrages  would  be  likely  to  fall  on  him.  If  he  was  not  of  such 
surpassing  merit,  the  tribesmen  looked  for  a  proper  jjerson  among 
the  other  relatives. 

Each  Sept  had  also  its  oAvn  Druid,  Bard,  and  Brehon,  who  were 


4Q  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

elected  from  among  the  most  distinguished  of  tlieir  respective  classes. 
To  each  of  these  was  allotted  a  portion  of  the  tribal  lands  for  their 
maintenance  during  their  tenure  of  office.  The  Brehon,  besides,  for 
his  services  in  long  and  weighty  law  suits,  was  entitled  to  a  fixed  fee, 
always  paid  in  cows,  which  were  the  representative  of  all  commercial 
values. 

One  peculiarity  in  the  transmission  and  division  of  landed  prop- 
erty deserves  special  mention  here,  if  for  no  other  purpose,  for  that, 
at  least,  of  showing  that  such  a  custom  must  have  survived  as  a  relic 
of  the  iH'imeval  state  of  society  when  the  Creator  of  land  and  sea  had 
to  use  commands  and  threats  to  force  men,  few  in  number  then,  to 
go  forth  and  possess  the  beautiful  earth  and  people  it. 

This  exceptional  mode  of  holding  and  transmitting  land  is  known 
as  the  Geilfine  system.  "The  original  acquirer  of  the  land,  as  each 
of  his  sons  grew  up  and  was  ready  to  leave  the  home,  gave  him  his 
share  in  the  paternal  acres,  and  planted  him  out  to  maintain  a  house- 
hold of  his  own.  This  was  done  successively  to  the  number  of  four 
sons,  if  he  had  as  many;  the  fifth  and  youngest  remained  with  his 
father  and  inherited  the  original  home.  The  father  and  the  four 
sons  formed  a  famil}^  group  of  Lve  households,  which  went  by  the 
name  of  the  Geilfine,'^  or  '  right  hand  group,'  from  the  five  fingers  on 
the  right  hand  {gilla).  The  youngest  son  in  his  turn,  when  he  had 
succeeded  to  the  residue  of  the  property,  and  his  sons  grew  up, 
planted  them  out  one  by  one  on  portions  of  the  remainder  of  the 
family  land.  He  and  his  four  sons  then  became  the  Geilfine,  and  his 
brothers'  four  households  were  in  this  way  pushed,  further  off  from 
the  household  of  the  stirps,  and  were  known  as  the  Deirblfine,  or 
'particular  group.'  The  youngest  and  the  fifth  son  of  the  new 
Geilfine  chief  in  his  turn  repeated  the  process,  forming  for  himself 
and  his  sons  a  fresh  Geilfine  on  his  own  account.  The  last  Geifine 
then  became  the  Deirblfine  in  its  turn ;  and  the  old  Deirblfine 
became  the  larfine  or  '  after  group.'     Again  the  process  was  repeated, 

*  Perhaps  from  geil  or  geal,  '  white  '  or  '  fair,'  and  fine,  '  a  family,' 


Eve7i  Murder  Compensated  by  an  Eric  or  Fine.  41 

and  yet  another  and  a  newer  Geilfine  was  formed;  each  group,  as 
before,  took  the  place  of  the  group  more  remotely  related,  and  the 
larfine  became  the  Indfine  or  'end  group.'  Here  the  process  ceased, 
and  no  further  sub-division  was  made.  Each  group  acquired  a  sepa- 
rate instead  of  an  undivided  share  in  the  paternal  acres,  and  became 
a  fresh  stirps,  retaining  the  tract  allotted  to  it,  and  repeating  the 
plotting  out  of  its  own  share  its  own  way.  Each  family  worked  out 
on  this  plan  consisted  of  seventeen  households — four  in  each  of  the 
four  groups,  plus  the  original  home.  Where  a  group  became  extinct, 
the  lands  were  taken  j^er  stirjjes  by  the  other  groups  of  the  family. 
On  failure  of  a  male  representative  the  land  reverted  to  the  tribe, 
though  in  later  days,  when  the  tribe-system  was  becoming  weakened, 
the  daughters  were  in  such  cases  permitted  to  inherit."  * 

So  much  for  the  great  features  of  social  legislation  among  the 
ancient  Celts  of  Ireland,  and  the  tenure  and  disposition  of  land.  To 
judge  of  the  degree  of  civilization  which  prevailed  in  the  commerce 
of  private  life,  we  have  to  look  more  closely  both  at  the  criminal  and 
the  civil  codes.  The  crime  of  treason  is  unknoAvn  in  this  Celtic  leg- 
islation. As  there  was  no  State  to  challenge  the  fealty  of  Irishmen, 
so  there  was  no  treason  against  it.  Every  infraction  of  the  law, 
whether  it  was  a  crime  committed  against  the  person,  or  against 
property,  or  against  public  order,  was  punished  by  a  fine  (eric),  to  be 
paid  in  a  stated  number  of  cows.  If  the  offender  did  not  possess  a 
sufficient  number,  then  the  family  to  which  he  belonged  made  up  the 
deficiency.  The  fine  Avas  only  levied  on  the  entire  Sept,  when  both 
the  offender  and  his  family  were  too  poor  to  satisfy  the  demands  of 
justice. 

In  cases  of  wilful  murder,  the  family  who  had  lost  a  member 
claimed  an  eric  as  compensation  from  the  murderer;  and,  in  case  he 
could  not  afford  the  amount,  he  lost  his  civil  rights,  and  the  blood- 
fine  was  levied  on  his  family, — the  share  of  the  homicide  in  the  lands 
of  the  Sept  going  to  satisfy  or  help  satisfy  the  claim  against  him. 

*  C.  G.  Wsflpole,  "  A  Short  Hist,  of  the  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  pp.  8-10 


43  Tlie  Cause  of  Ireland. 

In  all  doubts  and  contestations  which  arose  the  Brelion  decided, 
and  his  decision  was  final. 

Crimes  against  every  precept  in  the  Decalogue  were  punished  in 
the  same  way.  Wrongs  such  as  a  breach  of  contract,  a  trespass, 
fraud,  slander,  wilful  failure  in  paying  one's  debts,  or  in  fulfilling 
one's  bond,  were  visited  with  an  eric. 

Thus  the  spirit  of  this  ancient  Celtic  legislation  was  anything  but 
a  bloody  one,  while  being  strict  and  rigorous  in  exacting  the  legal 
compensation  for  guilt.  The  whole  community  was  made  to  have  a 
direct  and  real  interest  in  preventing  the  transgression  of  the  law,  as 
well  as  in  punishing  the  transgressor.  Is  it  not  toward  that  spirit, 
one  at  bottom  of  brotherly  love,  that  our  most  enlightened  modern 
jurists  would  wish  to  bring  back  our  criminal  legislation? 

We  have  been  able  to  form  an  estimate  of  the  property-basis  on 
which  the  ancient  Celtic  family  reposed:  it  will  be  not  a  little  instruc- 
tive to  examine  how  the  Brehon  Law  regulated  the  most  sacred  do- 
mestic relations.  Apparently,  judging  from  what  has  been  said  on 
the  transmission  of  property,  women  only  held  a  secondary  place  in 
the  household.  When  the  wife,  however,  brought  to  her  husband 
property  of  her  own  proportionate  to  his,  she  was,  before  the  law,  and 
in  all  respects,  esteemed  and  called  'the  wife  of  equal  dignity.' 
There  was,  besides,  nothing  in  the  customs  or  life  of  these  Celtic 
populations,  favoring  the  enslavement  of  woman  in  any  respect,  or 
Veducing  her  to  the  inferiority  which  characterized  the  condition  of 
woman  elsewhere. 

When  Christianity  came  to  perfect  all  things  among  the  Irish,  the 
reverence  for  woman,  founded  on  the  filial  love  enjoined  toward  the 
Mother  of  Our  Lord,  the  second  Mother  of  all  humanit3',  only  served 
to  make  every  mother's  place  in  the  family  higher  still  and  more 
sacred  in  the  eyes  of  all. 

We  may  conclude  this  brief  survey  of  Celtic  legislation  by  saying 
that  the  law-makers, — the  tribesmen  themselves, — were  careful  to 
protect  by  exact  prescriptions  not  only  the  rights  of  private  families 
and  individuals,  but  the  rights  of   the  entire  community.      "The 


Culture  of  the  Arts.  43 

property  and  security  of  woods,  the  regulation  of  watercourses,  but 
above  all  the  property  of  bees,  on  which  depended  the  principal  bev- 
erage of  the  people,  were  guarded "^ — says  Leland — "by  a  number  of 
minute  institutions,  which  breathe  a  spirit  of  equity  and  humanity. 
We  are  not  to  wonder  that  a  people  accustomed  to  the  refinements 
found  in  their  own  laws,  should  be  pronounced  of  all  others  the 
GREATEST  LOVERS  OF  JUSTICE.  This  is  the  honorable  testimony 
of  Sir  John  Davies  and  Lord  Coke.  With  shame  we  must  confess 
that  they  were  not  taught  this  love  of  justice  by  the  first  English 
settlers."  * 

This  would  naturally  lead  us  to  examine  a  little  more  closely  the 
character  and  virtues  of  the  Irish  People, — the  people  of  that  little 
known  and  much  slandered  Celtic  race, — whom  it  was  politic  in 
the  12 til  century  to  represent  as  Savages,  only  fit  to  be  outlawed  and 
plundered,  and  whom,  at  the  close  of  the  19th  century,  it  is  still  the 
policy  to  coerce  and  to  starve,  in  order  to  drive  them  from  the  land 
of  their  fathers,  to  which,  though  taken  from  them  by  their  enemies, 
they  still  so  fondly  cling.  But  the  gentle  qualities,  the  generous 
virtues,  the  rich  and  progressive  nature  of  the  race,  can  only  serve  to 
aggravate  the  wrong  done  them  by  the  spoiler  and  oppressor.  It  is 
no  justification  of  my  guilt,  that  my  neighbor,  whose  house  I  have 
seized,  whose  lands  I  have  got  into  my  possession  by  sheer  fraud  and 
force,  was  a  violent  man,  an  ill-mannered  or  unrefined  man,  and  that 
he  managed  his  property  ill. 

Of  intellectual  culture  in  general,  and  of  the  learning  which 
sprang  from  it,  the  ancient  Irish  entertained  the  highest  esteem,  and 
embodied  their  estimation  of  it  in  more  than  one  of  their  laws.  "So 
much  was  learning  prized  by  the  ancient  Irish," — says  Count  Murphy, 
"that  learned  men  ranked  next  to  kings  and  princes  of  the  blood. 
This  was  marked  by  the  number  of  colors  in  their  garments.  The 
kings  and  princes  wore  seven  colors,  historians  and  learned  men  six, 
nobles  five,  those  who  exercised  hospitality  four,  officers  three,  sol- 
diers two,  and  the  mechanics  or  working-classes  one."  f 

*  Hist,  of  Ireland,  i.,  p.  35.        f  "Ireland  Political,  Industrial,  and  Social,"  p.  238. 


44  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

In  tlie  next  chapter  we  shall  see  what  marvelous  fruits  tliis  admi- 
ration for  the  learned  and  this  general  love  of  intellectual  culture 
produced  in  the  nation,  after  it  had  embraced  Christianity.  Their 
practical  knowledge  of  both  the  industrial  and  the  fine  arts,  would 
also  be  an  index  to  their  advancement  in  learning  and  scholarship. 
But  the  requirements  of  physical  life,  and  the  enjoyments  authorized 
by  social  intercourse,  regulate  everywhere  the  exercise  of  industry  and 
the  sale  of  its  productions. 

The  great  importance  attached  to  archaeological  studies  has  led 
many  Irishmen,  some  of  them  of  noble  rank,  to  devote  their  time  as  Avell 
as  their  fortune  to  illustrate  the  antiquities  of  their  native  land.  A 
single  afternoon  spent  in  the  Library  of  the  Eoyal  Irish  Academy,  in 
Dublin,  will  convince  the  scholar  that  not  a  little  has  been  achieved 
in  this  field  of  science.  Alas!  the  whole  face  of  the  country  is  strewn 
with  the  ruins  of  noble  edifices,  reared  to  Eeligion  and  Learning  most 
of  them,  and  all  torn  down  in  hatred  of  the  faith  professed  by  the 
majority  of  Irishmen. 

What  proportion  of  these  ruins  point  to  Celtic  times, — to  those 
preceding  the  advent  of  Christianity,  and  to  those  erected  before  the 
Anglo-Norman  invasion  ?  These  are  questions  to  which  the  purpose 
of  our  argument  will  not  permit  us  to  give  an  answer.  AVorks, 
already  become  classical,  are  to  be  found  in  all  public  libraries,  and 
they  alone  can  satisfy  the  curiosity  of  the  student.  Many  prehistoric 
remains  are  found  on  the  Islands  all  round  the  Irish  coast.  Others 
are  scattered  here  and  there  on  the  mainland.  Tlie  architectural  rel- 
ics of  unquestioned  Celtic  origin,  and  of  a  well  ascertained  period, 
are  few.  But,  such  as  they  are,  they  afford  evidence  of  no  small  skill 
in  the  art  of  construction. 

What,  however,  the  readers  who  are  especially  interested  in  our 
inquiry  would  wish  to  know,  is  the  state  of  Architecture  in  Ireland  in 
the  age  of  St.  Patrick.  Certain  it  is  that,  in  those  days,  there  existed 
nothing  like  the  walled  towns,  or  the  large  cities,  which  sprung 
up  at  a  later  period.  What  the  author  of  the  "Cromwellian 
Conquest"  says  of  England  and  Ireland  in  the  12th  century,  applies 


Arcliitecture.  45 

in  a  very  great  measure  to  the  two  countries,  as  they  were  in  the 
year  432. 

"Unlike  England  then  covered  with  castles  on  the  heights,  where 
the  French  gentlemen  secured  themselves  and  their  families  against 
the  hatred  of  the  churls  and  villeins  (as  the  English  peasantry  were 
called),  the  dwellings  of  the  Irish  chiefs  were  of  wattle  or  clay.  It  is 
for  robbers  and  foreigners  to  take  to  rocks  and  precipices  for  security; 
for  native  rulers  there  is  no  such  fortress  as  justice  and  humanity. 

"The  Irish,  like  the  wealthiest  and  highest  of  the  present  day, 
loved  detached  houses,  surrounded  by  fields  and  woods.  Towns  and 
their  walls  they  looked  upon  as  tombs  or  sepulchres,  where  man's 
native  vigor  decays,  as  the  fiercest  animals  lose  their  courage  by  being 
caged.  They  wore  woolen  garments  much  in  the  present  fashion, 
and  disdained  to  case  themselves  in  iron,  thinking  it  honorable  to  fight 
naked  {i.e.,  unprotected  by  armor),  as  it  was  called,  with  the  mailed 
French  of  Normandy,  and  their  Flemish  and  English  followers,  just 
as  the  Gauls  fought  naked  with  the  well-armed  soldiers  of  Eome." 

It  may,  therefore,  be  said,  that,  generally  speaking,  the  most 
sumptuous  dwellings  were  built  of  wood.  The  surrounding  forests, 
with  their  magnificent  timber,  furnished  the  best  material  in  lavish 
abundance.  And,  so  far  back  as  we  can  go  into  the  history  of  the 
Celtic  Irish,  we  find  them  to  be  expert  and  intelligent  craftsmen  and 
builders.  The  best  houses  were  Avhat  we  Americans  call  frame 
houses;  the  frame  of  squared  timber;  the  intervals  filled  in  by 
lighter  material.  The  Icelandic  Sagas  describe  the  construction, 
decorations,  and  furniture  of  the  chief  Norsemen.  The  Celts  of 
Ireland  were  Hot  inferior  either  in  civilization  or  in  mechanical  skill 
to  their  northern  neighbors. 

As  to  the  dwellings  of  the  people  in  general,  much  would  depend 
on  individual  taste,  as  well  as  on  custom.  The  much  milder  climate  of 
1,400  and  2,000  years  ago  in  Ireland,  required  but  little  comparative 
additional  warmth  in  the  winter-time.  Even  in  our  days  the  labor- 
ing classes  in  Ireland  are  astonishingly  hardened  against  the  rigors  of 
that  season.     The  houses  made  of  wattles  and  clay  are  thus  easily 


46  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

accounted  for.  The  pastoral  population,  tlie  great  majority  of  the 
nation,  followed  their  herds  and  flocks  in  their  migrations  from  one 
pasturage  to  another.  They  built  for  themselves  and  their  families 
temporary  shelters  with  tall  wattles,  which  they  covered  with  long 
stripes  of  the  green  turf,  and  being  warmly  clad,  and  used  to  wet  and 
cold,  and  having,  besides,  abundance  of  the  most  wholesome  and  nour- 
ishing diet, — this  great  component  element  of  the  ancient  peasantry  of 
Erin,  lived  a  laborious,  simple,  innocent,  and  joyous  life.  They 
were  free  men,  often,  if  not  always,  tlie  owners  of  their  ovm.  flocks 
and  herds.  No  one  oppressed  them,  and  no  man  dared  to  despise 
them. 

There  were,  nevertheless,  villages  in  those  primitive  times. 
Each  Sept  had  its  own  centre,  where  was  the  abode  of  the  Chief,  and 
where,  with  the  introduction  of  Christianity,  was  the  residence  of  the 
Bishop,  and  his  cathedral  church.  Around  these,  other  institutions 
soon  arose.  With  the  Church,  the  Monastery,  and  the  School, 
Architecture  came  into  being,  and  flourished.  And  with  Christian 
Architecture  all  the  Arts,  born  in  the  Sanctuary,  were  perfected  in 
the  Sanctuary,  beautifying  their  home,  and  making  it  an  image  of 
the  House  of  God  on  high.  From  the  Churcli  and  the  School  the 
love  of  the  Beautiful,  like  the  love  of  the  True  and  the  Good, 
necessarily  spread  through  the  land,  creating  tlie  edifices  whose  very 
ruins  are  fast  perishing  through  the  stolid  indifference  of  the  men 
to  whom  Protestantism  or  the  sword  of  Cromwell  gave  their 
possession. 

In  the  age  of  St.  Patrick,  therefore.  Christian  or  ecclesiastical 
architecture  was  only  in  its  rude  beginning.  Of  the  condition  of 
civil  architecture  we  can  only  guess. 

In  Ireland,  among  a  primitive  people  enjoying  in  abundance  all 
the  means  of  supplying  the  table,  all  the  materials  for  building  their 
homes  and  making  them  comfortable,  luxury  was  little  likely  to  have 
many  votaries.  The  laws  regulating  the  color  of  the  dress  worn  by 
the  different  classes  in  the  community,  point  to  an  advanced  stage  of 
the  textile  arts.     It  would  have  been  strange  indeed,  if  a  people 


Irish  Industry  and  Art  in  tlte  Fifth  Century.  47 

coining  originally  from  Western  Asia,  where  the  richest  and  finest 
fabrics  were  manufactured,  and  where  both  Phenicia  and  Persia  vied 
with  each  other  in  inventing  for  them  the  richest  dyes,  should  have 
forgotten  their  native  cunning.  Even  had  they  lost,  in  their  wander- 
ings westward  over  Continental  Europe,  somewhat  of  their  refine- 
ment and  culture,  the  needs  of  the  more  northern  climate  of  Ireland 
must  have  stimulated  anew  their  invention.  Then,  later,  the  arrival 
of  tlie  Plienician  navigators,  and  the  settlement  among  the  Irish  of 
Phenician  colonies,  would  have  re-awakened,  in  a  race  of  a  highly 
eestlietic  temperament,  the  taste  for  soft  fabrics,  graceful  vesture, 
and  the  glorious  colors  that  recalled  the  Asiatic  home  of  their  fathers. 
Foreigners,  foreign  artists  particularly,  are  wont  to  contrast  the 
inborn  good  taste  of  the  peasant  women  of  Ireland,  in  the  art  with 
which  they  fold  their  poor  garments  around  them,  and  their  instinc- 
tive sense  of  color,  as  compared  with  the  English,  whose  sculptors 
never  can  learn  to  drape  a  figure,  and  whose  women  bedeck 
themselves  with  the  colors  the  most  dissonant.  Art-critics  have 
remarked  in  tlae  celebrated  "Book  of  Kells"  a  comminghng  of 
colors,  and  certain  hues  bearing  a  striking  resemblance  to  the  far- 
famed  dyes  of  Tyre. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  the  Irish  were  renowned  for  their  fabrics  of 
linen  and  wool.  The  former  was  worn  in  ample  folds  round  the 
person,  and  these  folds  were  held  together  on  the  shoulder  or  chest 
by  the  fihulcB  of  gold,  silver,  or  other  exquisitely  wrought  metals, 
which  we  still  admire  in  the  Museum  of  the  Royal  Irish  Academy. 
The  heavy  cloth  cloaks  or  mantles  would  require  the  enormous 
fibulae,  which  have  still  survived  the  destruction  of  ages. 

Many  of  these  beautiful  ornaments,  like  the  torques  or  collars, 
armlets,  bracelets,  ear-rings,  &c.,  arc  of  pure  gold,  and  strikingly 
akin  to  those  recently  discovered  in  the  Tomb  of  Agamemnon,  and 
in  the  ruins  of  ancient  Troy.  These  remains  of  ancient  Irish  Art, 
contemporary,  most  probably,  with  Ilion  it  its  palmy  days,  were  not 
taken  out  of  tomb  or  sepulchre.  These  were  again  and  again  rifled 
and  desecrated  by  fanatical  hatred  or  lust  for  gold.     It  is  from  tlie 


48  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

peat  bog, — the  refuge  of  our  native  population  in  tlieir  darkest  days, 
— that  most  of  those  archaic  treasures  have  been  taken. 

Of  the  love  for  Music  and  Song  for  Avhich  Ireland  has  ever  been 
famous,  much  need  not  here  be  said.  The  Harp,  which  is  still  the 
acknowledged  national  emblem,  recalls  not  only  tlie  passionate  love 
of  the  people  for  poetry,  song,  and  music,  but  the  existence  of 
national  treasures  in  all  these  departments,  which  are  the  glorious 
fruit  of  native  genius.  Like  the  golden  and  bronze  ornaments 
discovered  by  accident  in  morass  or  ploughed  field,  like  the  frag- 
mentary remains  of  ancient  architecture  and  literature,  our  ancient 
national  poetry  and  music  are  only  broken  relics  of  a  buried  past. 
The  Harp  survived  the  first  stages  of  English  violence  as  an  insti- 
tution. Every  Sept,  so  long  as  a  single  Sept  remained  in  Erin,  had  its 
Bard  and  its  Harpists,  who  fired  the  heart  of  the  assembled  Tribes- 
men on  their  solemn  festivals.  "The  harp  that  had  long  been  silent 
in  Gaul,  and  was  heard  in  Britain  only  in  the  mountains  of  Wales, 
was  universally  played  in  Ireland;  and  the  gaiety  of  the  airs,  and  the 
skill  of  the  artists,  astonished  and  delighted  those  accustomed  to  the 
slower  airs  of  the  Welsh."  So  speaks  Mr.  Prendergast.  Elsewhere, 
quoting  from  another  Irish  digger  among  the  ruins  of  the  Celtic  past, 
he  says  :  "The  English  became  as  fond  of  the  harp  as  the  Irish.  In 
the  inventories  of  the  household  goods  of  the  gentry  confiscated  at 
the  Eevolution  of  1688,  the  ancient  English  families  of  the  Pale  are 
found  possessed  of  one  Irish  Tiarpe.  .  .  .  Ten  years  afterward  it 
survived  in  Connaught,  where  the  old  Irish  gentry  are  described  as 
careful  to  have  their  children  taught  to  speak  Latin,  write  well,  and 
play  on  the  harp."  Besides,  if  the  national  music,  like  everything 
Celtic  or  Irish,  was  proscribed  and  ruined  by  English  bigotry,  we 
cannot  wonder  that  a  general  disuse  of  seven  centuries,  and  a  sup- 
pression of  all  the  national  usages  with  which  the  harp  was  con- 
nected, have  only  left  it  a  memory,  but  a  treasured  memory  of  other 
days. 

The  Harp  and  the  National  Music,  Irish  Poetry  and  Song,  like 
the  old  Celtic  national  sports,  so  innocent  and  so  manly,  in  which  our 


Poetry,  Music,  and  Song.  49 

ancestors  delighted  on  the  great  hoHdays  that  brought  all  the  people 
together, — will  only  revive  again  when  Ireland  is  allowed  the  same 
liberty  accorded  to  Catholic  Canada, — that  of  making  her  own  laws, 
cultivating  her  own  literature,  and  living  through  her  own  institu- 
tions.* 

Canada,  while  the  French  Kevolution  with  the  successive  social 
upheavals  that  have  come  after  it  has  swept  away  the  old  order  of 
things,  was  allowed  to  remain  on  the  shores  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  in 
peaceful,  blissful  enjoyment  of  native  tongue,  French  Laws,  and  the 
Catholic  religion.  The  little  American  colony,  as  it  developed  and 
grew,  retained  all  the  dear  and  precious  elements  of  her  own 
nationality.  To  that  idea  of  a  separate  nationality  the  French 
Canadians  still  cling  with  a  touching  devotion. 

Let  Irishmen  not  lose  heart.  Even  in  the  United  States,  even 
throughout  the  Provinces  forming  the  Canadian  Confederation, 
Irishmen  still  worship  with  unfailing  love  this  ever-cherished  ideal  of 
Irish  nationality  figured  by  the  Irish  Harp.  How  vivid  in  the 
memory  of  him  who  writes  this  page,  is  still  the  recollection  of  St. 
Patrick's  Day  celebrated  in  dear  old  Quebec,  "the  walled  city  of  the 
Xorth."  It  is  all  present  to  his  mind's  eye  yet :  the  various  Xational 
Societies,  English,  Scotch,  Irish,  and  Canadian,  with  their  banners, 
marching  in  solemn  procession  to  St.  Patrick's  Church,  and  headed 
by  the  bands  of  the  English  regiments  in  garrison,  one  of  them  the 


*  The  author  in  oonversation  with  a  high  official  of  the  Irish  Government,  some 
months  before  this  was  written,  dwelt  with  real  pleasure  on  the  enlightened 
liberality  with  which  England  had  treated  French  Canada  after  its  conquest  in 
1759.  The  articles  of  Cession  stipulated  that  the  French  Colony  should  be  pro- 
tected in  the  Institutions  derived  from  France.  Hence  the  French  Canadians 
have  ever  maintained  intact  their  Church  organization,  the  Civil  Laws  derived 
from  the  mother  country,  and  the  French  Language.  England, — though  certain 
Governors-General  and  certain  Colonial  Ministers  showed  a  disposition  to  do  away 
with  these  '  relics  of  a  by-gone  age,' — has  always  been  faithful  to  her  part  of  the 
compact.  When  the  high  official  had  listened  to  this  history  of  Canadian  civil  and 
religious  freedom :  "  If  England  had  only  done  so  to  Ireland,"  he  said,  "  what  a 
different  state  of  things  we  sh<nild  have  here  !  " 

The  cry  of  Canadian  patriots  has  ever  been :  Nos  Institutions;  notre  Langue, 
and  nos  Lois. 


50  The  Cause  of  Ireland 

87th.  Members  of  Parliament,  Judges,  the  Bar,  the  Governor- 
General  and  Council,  filling  the  seats  of  honor  near  the  Sanctuary; 
the  Irish  Soldiers  crowding  the  vast  galleries  with  the  red  masses  of 
their  uniform;  the  golden  Irish  Harp  on  a  ground  of  green  flaming 
on  the  breasts  of  the  men,  hanging  from  a  green  ribbon  round  the 
neck  of  the  preacher.  And, — as  all  were  waiting  for  the  beginning 
of  the  Solemn  Mass,  the  organ  giving  voice,  softl}',  in  tones  of  heart- 
melting  sweetness  and  tenderness  to  some  one  of  these  national 
melodies,  "The  Exile  of  Erin,"  "The  Coolleen,"  "The  Harp  of 
Tara";  and  3'ou  could  see  every  head  bowed  down,  and  tears  on  every 
cheek. 

Xo  !  Xo  !  Irish  Nationality  is  not  dead.  In  the  hearts  of  any 
other  people  it  would  be  dead  and  buried  out  of  sight  long  ago,  after 
such  destruction,  desolation,  desertion,  and  despair.  But  in  the 
heai'ts  of  such  a  people  as  we  shall  show  the  Irish  to  be  in  the 
following  chapters, — such  a  sacked  ideal  can  never  die.  It  will 
survive  all  disappointments  and  disasters,  as  long  as  a  single  Irishman 
is  left  to  wait  and  to  hope  for  the  dawn. 

Hear  how  these  Celtic  generations  of  the  past  idealized  their 
suffering  and  almost  annihilated  nation  under  the  name  of  Dakk 
EOSALEEN  : 

Woe  and  pain,  pain  and  woe 

Are  my  lot,  iiigbt  and  noon. 
To  see  yonr  bri<^ht  face  clouded  so, 

Like  to  the  mournful  moon. 
But  3'et — will  I  rear  your  throne 

Again  in  golden  sheen  ; 

'Tis  you  shall  reign,  shall  reign  alone, 

My  Dark  Rosaleen  ! 

My  own  Rosaleen  ! 

'Tis  you  shall  reign,  shall  reign  alone, 

My  Dark  Rosaleen  ! 

Over  dews,  over  sands 

Will  I  fly,  for  your  weal : 
Your  delicate  white  hands 

Shall  girdle  me  with  steel. 
At  home,  in  your  emerald  bowers. 

From  morning's  dawn  till  e'en, 


Poetry,  Music,  and  Song.  51 

You'll  pray  for  inc,  my  flower  of  flowers, 

My  Dark  Kosaleen  ! 

My  own  Kosaleen  ! 
You'll  pray  for  me,  my  flower  of  flowers, 

My  Dark  Kosaleen  ! 

Oil !  the  Erne  shall  run  red 

With  redundance  of  blood. 
The  earth  shall  rock  beneath  our  tread, 

And  flames  wrap  hill  and  wood 
And  fifun-peal,  and  slog:an-cry. 
Wake  many  a  glen  serene. 
Ere  you  shall  fade,  ere  you  shall  die 
My  Dark  Kosaleen  ! 
My  own  Kosaleen ! 
The  Judgment  Hour  must  first  be  nigi)., 
Ere  you  can  fade,  ere  you  can  die, 
My  Dark  Kosaleen. 


If. 

Progress. 

TTTHAT  has  already  been  said  of  the  social  condition  of  the  Irish 
race  when  St.  Patrick  brought  them,  with  the  Gospel,  the 
germs  of  a  higher  culture  and  civilization,  must  have  enabled  the 
reader  to  form  a  sufhciently  correct  opinion  on  the  progress  they  had 
then  made  in  all  the  arts  of  peace  and  war,  in  all  the  industries  be- 
longing to  a  civilized  community. 

They  were  mainly  a  pastoral  people,  subsisting  on  the  butter, 
milk,  and  flesh  of  their  herds,  deriving  their  clothing  from  the  wool 
of  their  flocks,  and  the  flax  so  extensively  cultivated.  The  growth 
of  wheat  and  corn  was  a  precious  source  of  agricultural  wealth,  which 
all  the  Celtic  Tribes  had  brought  with  them  from  the  East.  The 
climate  of  Ireland,  far  more  genial  1,400  years  ago,  than  it  is  at  the 
present  clay,  permitted  the  husbandman  to  look  forward  to  plentiful 
harvests.  So  that  it  was  indeed  a  land  of  abundance.  Besides  the 
produce  of  the  land  there  were  the  teeming  lakes  and  rivers,  and  the 
exhaustless  treasures  of  the  deep  sea  all  around  the  coasts.  The 
Irish,  whose  war-galleys  searched  the  coasts  of  Britain,  Gaul,  and 
Spain,  and  whose  adventurous  spirit  sought  and  discovered  the  north- 
ern continent  of  America,  were  not  men  to  allow  their  own  sea-fish- 
eries to  lie  idle  near  their  hand,  like  golden  grain  on  the  field  perish- 
ing for  lack  of  sickles. 

And  then  as  the  5th  century  closed  over  the  scarcely  opened  grave 

of  St.  Patrick,  and  while  the  6th  opened  on  a  people  running  swiftly 

forward  toward  the  attainment  of  the  elevated  ideal  civilization  held 

forth  by  Christianity,   the  doctrine  and   morality  of  the  new  faith 

(52) 


Columhanus'  Apostleship.  53 

acted  like  an  intoxicating  wine  upon  these  fervent  generations  of 
Irishmen.  ISTo  heroic  efforts,  no  sublime  personal  sacrifices,  seemed 
impossible  to  men  and  women,  who  had  drunk  deeply  of  this  divine 
cup.  Then  ceased  the  piratical  expeditions  abroad  in  quest  of  plun- 
der and  slaves;  then  disappeared  from  the  length  and  breadth  of  the 
island  the  property  of  man  in  man.  Then,  impelled  by  that  super- 
natural charity  springing  from  the  idea  of  the  brotherhood  of  all  men 
in  Christ  the  Eedeemer,  the  Son  of  God,  and  the  first-born  of  the 
race  to  the  possession  of  the  eternal  Kingdom, — Irishmen  went  forth 
to  communicate  to  their  fellow-men  everywhere  the  treasure  of  this 
fraternity  and  its  everlasting  hopes.  Then  did  Columba  with  his 
companions  seek  lona,  as  a  place  fitted  to  plant  a  nursery  of  apostolic 
men;  and  from  lona,  his  disciples  in  their  wicker  hide-clad  coracles 
sailed  to  the  Arctic  Circle  and  planted  the  Cross  in  Iceland,  long  be- 
fore the  Norsemen  dreamed  of  seeking  a  refuge  there.  Then,  too, 
from  lona  the  sacred  fire  passed  to  the  neighboring  shores  of  Albion, 
and  spread  among  the  rude  and  warlike  Picts  from  sea  to  sea,  and 
southward  till  Lindisfarne  sprang  up,  the  daughter  of  lona,  fairer 
and  greater  than  her  parent. 

Then,  too,  inflamed  by  the  examples  of  Columba  and  his  sons, 
Columhanus,  as  if  bearing  the  very  soul  as  well  as  the  name  of  the 
Patriarch  of  lona,  hastened  to  Gaul  as  to  a  battle-field  on  which 
Christ's  forces  were  being  defeated,  and  where  reinforcements  were 
sadly  needed  to  uphold  the  Cross.  The  great  mass  of  well-educated 
Christians  even  have  read  too  rapidly,  studied  too  superficially,  the 
history  of  these  dark  ages,  to  know  how  utterly  and  inconceivably 
barbarous  were  the  Prankish  Kings  in  the  days  of  Columhanus  ;  and 
how  seemingly  hopeless  a  task  it  was  to  make  them,  their  courtiers, 
their  feudal  nobles,  and  their  armies  of  retainers, — like  flocks  of 
ravenous  vultures  descended  on  the  fairest  regions  of  Western 
Europe, — practice  any  one  of  the  gentle  virtues  recommended  by 
Christ.  Yet  the  Irish  Apostle  succeeded  in  establishing  in  several 
places  among  these  ever-wai'ring  Prankish  Kingdoms  monasteries  and 
monastic  schools,  which  became  the  central  springs  of  the  intellectual 


54  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

and  moral  life.  The  prevailing  spirit  of  evil  drove  the  old  man  and 
his  disciples  into  the  wilds  of  Northern  Germany.  There,  too,  they 
scattered  broadcast  the  seeds  of  the  higher  life.  St.  Gall  remained 
behind  on  the  shores  of  Lake  Constance,  when  Colnmbanus  was 
forced  to  fly  into  Italy,  and  to  find  a  refuge  amid  the  summits  of  the 
Ligurian  Alps.  There  he  planted  a  monastery,  around  which  soon 
sprang  up  a  city,  and  which,  in  course  of  time,  became  one  of  the 
great  schools  of  Southern  Europe. 

But  these  missionary  enterprises,  from  which  Christian  Europe  in 
her  darkest  days  derived  immortal  benefit,  Avere  only  the  overflowing 
of  that  supernatural  piety  and  learning  which  could  not  bo  contained 
within  the  narrow  limits  of  a  single  island. 

But,  just  as  we  love  to  trace  to  their  source  the  great  rivers  which 
fertilize  the  earth,  and  are  the  great  channels  of  intercourse  betAveen 
tlie  peoples  of  each  continent,  so  let  us  go  back  a  moment  to  the 
well-springs  in  Ireland  of  that  extraordinary  learning  and  apostolic 
spirit. 

We  have  seen  what  a  magnificent  provision  the  Brehon  Laws  made 
for  the  public  exercise  of  hospitality.  In  very  truth,  if  w^e  consider 
what  Avas  happening  all  over  the  Island  through  the  two  centuries 
immediately  following  the  death  of  St.  Patrick,  Ave  might  be  justified 
in  saying  that  the  framers  of  the  Senchus  j\Ior  Avere  inspired  in  some 
at  least  of  their  legislative  provisions. 

Tlie  generous  hospitality  prescribed  by  law  was  conspicuously 
shown  during  the  memorable  period  when  the  monastery-schools  of 
Ireland  were  frequented  not  only  by  crowds  of  native  students,  but 
by  a  multitude  of  scholars  from  the  neighboring  islands  and  the  Con- 
tinent. A  contemporary,  St.  Bede,  revered  in  England  as  the  "Ven- 
erable Bede,"  says  of  this  cuvstom:  "The  Irish  received  wdth  kindness 
strangers  Avho  came  from  CA'ery  country,  at  these  periods,  to  be  in- 
structed among  them,  and  gi'atuitously  supplied  them  with  food, 
books,  and  teachers." 

Another  Englishman,  who  wrote  in  1607,  for  the  purpose  of  de- 
crying the  Irish  race  and  their  religion,  cannot  help  bearing  this  tes- 


Well-Spriiigs  in  Ireland  of  Learning  and  Sanctity.  55 

timony:  "The  Saxons  of  tliat  age  (the  9th  century)  flocked  thither, 
as  to  the  great  mart  of  learning  ;  and  this  is  the  reason  why  we  find 
it  so  often  said  in  our  writers  of  Lives  of  the  Saints,  such  a  one  was 
sent  over  to  Ireland  to  he  educated;  and  hence  the  reason  also  of  this 
passage  in  the  Life  of  Sulgenus,  who  flourished  700  years  ago: 

'  Exemplo  patrum,  commotus  amore  legendi, 

Ibat  ad  Hibernos,  sophia  mirabile  claros. 

Athirst  of  knowledge,  he  the  well-known  road 

Towards  Erin  by  onr  fathers  trod,  pursued, 

And  found  supernal  wisdom  in  her  lov'd  abode.'" 

The  most  illustrious  orators  and  writers  of  our  day,  men  of  oppo- 
site creeds  and  political  parties,  like  Guizot  and  Montalembert,  have 
drawn  a  truthful  and  most  attractive  picture  of  Ireland,  when  her 
Saints  and  her  Schools,  her  swarming  monasteries  and  apostolic  mis- 
sionaries, caused  Europe  to  call  her  Insula  Sanctorum  and  Doctorum- 
The  records  of  these  universities  of  all  learning  and  piety,  of  these 
nurseries  of  Christian  education,  when  Christendom  was  as  yet  in  the 
cradle, — have  perished,  alas!  with  the  monasteries  where  they  were 
written.  Monks,  monasteries,  Masters  and  Missionaries  had  made 
Ireland  the  wonder  of  the  world  and  the  resort  of  all  who  thirsted  for 
learning  and  the  true  law  of  life:  the  Enemy  of  all  human  progress 
came  in  an  evil  hour,  and  all  these  well-springs  of  human  science  and 
heavenly  wisdom  were  filled  up,  choked,  and  obliterated  by  the  ruins 
heaped  upon  them.  Yet,  from  the  fragments  which  time  and  fanat- 
icism have  spared,  we  can  glean  enough  of  detail  to  fill  up  the  picture 
sketched  in  "The  Monks  of  the  AVest." 

Scarcely  had  the  glorious  career  of  the  Apostle  of  Ireland  come  to 
its  close  together  with  that  great  Fifth  Century,  so  fertile  in  illustri- 
ous Christian  men,  when  his  beloved  Island  was  thickly  dotted  all 
over  with  these  famous  monastic  schools,  whose  example  and  influ- 
ence St.  Leander,  the  Apostle  of  the  Visigoths,  set  about  emulating 
in  Seville,  about  the  year  570.  The  study  of  the  Scriptures  opened 
up  to  the  bright  and  active  Irish  intellect  a  new  and  boundless  spirit- 
ual world.  The  positive  knowledge  afforded  by  Eevelation,  afforded 
inquirers  after  truth  a  large,  high,  and  firm  footing  from  which  they 


56  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

could  direct  their  investigations  into  the  visible  and  invisible  worlds, 
— each  glorious  horizon  illuminated  by  Faith  opening  out  into  still 
vaster  horizons  beyond.     Ireland,  who  had  already  her  universally 
honored  colleges  of  Druids,  Bards,  and  Brehons  (or  Judges),  and  who 
had  evidently  always  favored  the  pursuit  of  learning  as  well  as  its 
professors,  saw  all  at  once, — as  did  Augustine  at  the  feet  of  Ambrose 
in  the  preceding  century, — the  boundaries  of  all  familiar  knowledge 
pushed  back  by  the  light  of  Christian  Truth.     This  can  explain  the 
avidity  with  which  Princes,  Bards,  Brehons,  and  people  flocked  to 
St.  Patrick  and  his  companions,  and  hung  upon  their  lips,  while  they 
exposed  the  doctrines  and  unfolded  the  history  of   the  Old  and  ISTew 
Testaments,     It  was  a  part  of  Patrick's  system  of   ecclesiastical  ad- 
ministration to  multiply  churches  and  missionary  centres.      lie  and 
his  disciples  cared  but  little  for  personal  ease  or  physical  comfort. 
The  church  or  chapel  might  be,  and  was  in  most  instances,  con- 
structed of  the  rudest  material.     But  beneath  its  lowly  roof  was  the 
Altar  of  the  New  Law  and  the  Ark  within  which  the  Awful  Presence 
was  ever  abiding.     Near  it  was  the  Well,  blessed  by  the  Apostle  and 
affording  water  for  Baptism,  and  for  those  abUitions  typical  of  the 
cleansing  and  sanctifying  operations  of  sacramental  grace.     The  hut 
of  wattles  in  which  the  Pastor  and  Teacher  took  his  brief  repose,  was 
the  first  Christian  School.     Presently,  it  could  no  longer  contain  the 
number  of  scholars  who  came  to  listen  and  to  learn.     They  became  a 
multitude  covering  field  and  hillside  :   the  master  had  to  instruct 
them,  as  Christ  was  wont,  from  some  gentle  elevation  from  Avhich  he 
could  be  seen  and  heard.     One  day's  teaching  did  not  satisfy  this  mul- 
titude, who  hungered  for  the  bread  of  life  eternal,  and  in  whom  the 
first  draughts  of  divine  knowledge  only  kindled  a  thirst  they  were 
fain  to  satisfy.      Kude  temporary  abodes,  after   the  model   of  the 
primitive  Irish  church  and  pastoral  residence,  sprung  up  all  around. 
Men  who  had  come  to  learn  and  had  found  out  the  better  way,  would 
not  depart  from  those  who  had  been  for  them  the  guides  to  Salvation: 
they  had  come  to  learn,  and  they  now  remained  to  pray,  to  live,  to 
labor  with  their  masters. 


Well-Springs  in  Ireland  of  Learning  and  Sanctity.  57 

So  grew  these  early  Irish  schools,  these  lowly  but  fervent  monas- 
teries of  both  sexes.  For  the  women  would  not  be  outrun  in  the  race 
of  learning,  holiness,  and  apostolic  zeal.  I  am  writing  this  almost 
within  sight  of  the  Round  Tower  of  Kildare — of  the  spot  where 
Bridget  built  herself  the  oaken  church  and  cells,  and  lighted  the  fire 
of  Christian  sanctity,  learning,  and  hospitality  which  burned  so 
brightly  for  more  than  a  thousand  years. 

Ireland  had  become  one  vast  seminary  in  which  all  claisses  and 
sexes  vied  with  each  other  in  cultivating  both  sacred  and  profane 
science.  For, — and  the  civilized  woi'ld  must  not  be  allowed  to  forget 
it, — these  priests  and  monks  of  the  early  ages  kindled  the  torch  of 
secular  knowledge  and  set  it  on  high  near  the  sanctuary  where  flamed 
night  and  day  the  lamp  which  burned  before  the  Holy  of  Holies. 
The  happiness  begotten  of  the  possession  of  this  twofold  treasure  was 
too  great  to  be  shut  up  within  the  home  or  the  heart  of  the  unselfish 
Irishman.  He  must  go  abroad  to  carry  the  light  to  other  lands,  and 
to  enkindle  there  in  men's  souls  the  sacred  thirst  which  still  con- 
sumed his  own.  And  the  men  of  the  neighboring  Britain,  of 
Gaul  and  Germany  and  Northern  Spain,  are  impelled  by  a  divine 
instinct  to  cross  the  seas  and  to  seek  in  the  land  of  Columkille, 
Columbanus,  and  Fridian,  the  knowledge  and  sanctity  which 
had  made  of  these  apostolic  men  shining  lights  amid  the  universal 
gloom. 

It  was  inevitable,  it  was  ]iatural,  considering  the  character  of  the 
Irish  people  in  these  remote  times,  and  the  existing  laws  and  institu- 
tions, that  the  scholars  who  flocked  to  the  Universities  of  Ireland, 
should  be  welcomed  heartily  and  made  sharers  of  the  hospitality  so 
bountifully  provided  for  the  stranger,  the  wayfarer.  There  is  no  evi- 
dence that  the  great  Schools  of  Cork  and  Lismore  and  Armagh,  could 
boast  of  structures  as  substantial  and  splendid  as  medieval  Oxford  or 
Cambridge.  The  stiaiiger-stu dents  shared  with  their  Irish  school- 
fellows lodging  and  fare.  What  the  great  Teachers  and  the  people 
of  the  neighborhood  had  to  give,  that  they  gave  with  a  hearty  good 
will.     It  was  the  Water  of  Life,  the  sublime  doctrines  of  Eevelation 


58  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

together  with  what  then  constituted  human  science, — that  the  eager 
multitudes  had  come  to  seek:  and  as  they  stooped  to  drink  of  the 
gushing  spring,  what  cared  they  if  the  cup  they  put  to  their  lips  was 
of  gold  or  of  wood  ?  They  drank  and  drank  only  to  find  their  thirst 
increasing  ever^  and  the  blessed  waters  even  more  deliglitful  to  the 
taste. 

To  this  golden  age  of  intellectual  progress  in  Ireland  succeeded 
ages  of  Barbarian  invasion  and  misrule,  when  churches  and  schools, 
monasteries  and  monks,  the  devoted  Masters  and  their  grateful 
pupils  were  involved  in  one  fearful  tornado  of  fire  and  blood.  All 
through  the  domination  of  Dane  and  Norseman,  of  Norman  and 
Anglo-Saxon;  when  Elizabeth's  hordes  swept  over  the  land  like  flame 
through  a  forest,  and  the  devastation  was  perfected  by  Cromwell  and 
the  soldiers  of  Third  William, — the  Irish  mind  was  not  turned  away 
from  the  pursuit  of  knowledge,  or  the  hospitality  of  Irish  homes 
denied  to  the  wandering  "Poor  Scholar,"  who  traversed  the  land  in 
search  of  teachers.  It  is  only  one  feature  of  that  long  Period  of 
Terror,  that  the  mass  of  tlie  Irish  people  could  not  be  taught  by  men 
of  their  own  faith  either  the  doctrines  of  their  baptismal  creed  or  the 
elements  of  secular  knoAvledge.  Catholic  education  was  a  treasure 
for  the  giving  and  getting  of  which  men  imperilled  their  fortunes, 
their  liberty,  and  their  lives. 

There  are  few  men  in  Ireland  of  between  sixty  and  seventy  years  of 
age,  who  may  not  recall  the  Poor  Scholars  so  kindly  received,  before 
the  rise  of  the  National  Schools,  into  every  house  where  the  poor 
Catholics  could  pay  for  a  master  to  teach  the  children  of  the  neigh- 
borhood. "In  Ireland  it  is  a  custom  immemorially  established  for 
those  petty  schoolmasters  who  teach  in  chapels,  or  temporary  huts, 
freely  to  instruct  such  poor  boys  as  come  from  remote  places,  and  are 
unable  to  pa}^  The  poor  scholar,  while  he  remains  at  the  school, 
goes  home,  night  and  night  about,  with  his  schoolfellows,  Avhose 
parents  that  can  afford  it  occasionally  supply  him  with  a  few  old 
clothes,  as  well  as  food  and  lodging.  This  appears  to  be  a  faint 
emanation  of  the  ancient  custom  in  Ireland,  so  celebrated  by  his- 


The  Vicissitudes  of  Kildare.  59 

torians^  of  supplying,  at  tlie  national  expense,  all  foreign   students 
with  meat,  drink,  clothes,  lodging,  hooks,  &c."  * 

Hospitality  so  exercised  by  a  whole  people  and  toward  all 
strangers  and  wayfarers,  bespeaks  the  existence  of  a  high  degree  of 
civilization, — of  such,  at  least,  as  supposes  great  moral  culture  and 
refinement,  whatever  may  be  the  state  of  the  mechanical  and 
industrial  arts.  This  refinement,  based,  as  it  is  in  the  Brehon  Laws, 
upon  the  supernatural  motives  furnished  by  Sacred  History  in  the 
Old  and  New  Testaments,  is  further  displayed  in  the  extraordinary 
and  unique  spectacle  afforded  by  these  early  Irish  Universities,  where 
the  multitudes  of  scholars  are  supported  at  the  public  expense. 

On  this  peaceful  home  of  Christian  Civilization  fell  the  scourge 
of  a  Norse  invasion.  The  forests  that  covered  the  Island,  while 
making  it  difficult  for  the  natives  to  unite  for  defensive  operations, 
allowed  them  a  safe  retreat  from  the  sword  of  the  invaders.  But  the 
deep  estuaries  along  the  coast,  and  the  rivers  navigable  to  the  light 
craft  of  the  sea-rovers,  opened  up  access  to  the  interior.  It  was  near 
those  estuaries  and  along  those  watercourses  that  Christianity  had 
planted  her  monasteries.     They  were  utterly  destroyed. 

The  Anglo-lSrormans  who  came  with  Strongbow  to  Ireland,  found 
churches,  monasteries,  and  schools,  rising  and  re-flourishing  slowly 
from  the  ruin  and  chaos  wrought  by  the  Danes  and  Norsemen.  But 
the  religious  establishments  then  struggHng  into  existence,  were  only 
like  fair  shoots  timidly  rising  above  the  blackened  earth,  where  once 
the  lordly  forest-trees  had  stood  in  close  array  like  an  army,  ere  the 
hand  of  the  destroyer  had  unchained  against  them  the  devouring 
flames. 

I  have  spoken  of  Kildare.  Let  me  glance  at  its  history  as  illus- 
trating the  fate  which  befell  one  of  the  most  glorious  creations  of 
Christian  piety  in  Ireland.  Its  vicissitudes  are  those  of  every  other 
great  centre  of  spiritual  life  and  learning  in  Ireland,  resuming  in 
itself  the  story  of  Christian  civilization  therein. 

*  Dr.  R.  R.  Madden,  "  Hist,  of  Irish  Periodical  Literature,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  153,  note. 


60  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

While  the  Holy  Abbess  busied  herself  chiefly  in  promoting  and 
spreading  among  her  own  sex  throughout  Ireland  the  practice  of 
spiritual  perfection,  of  Christian  hospitality,  and  care  of  the  poor,  she 
was  assisted  and  directed  in  all  her  labors  by  St.  Conlaeth,  the  first 
Bishop  of  Kildare,  Their  lives  and  names  are  inseparably  connected 
in  church  history,  as  well  as  i]i  the  veneration  of  Catholic  Ireland; 
for  theirs  was  one  common  life-work,  to  make  of  their  people  true 
children  of  God. 

That  the  collection  of  cells  in  which  Bridget  and  her  nuns  lived, 
was  of  the  simplest  construction,  is  a  thing  well  known;  and  of  the 
same  simple  if  not  rude  material  and  form  was  the  church  in  Avhich 
not  only  the  lieligious  but  the  surrounding  lay  community  worshiped. 
As  it  always  happens  in  the  early  missionary  stage  in  all  countries, — 
the  first  care  was  to  provide  sufficient  accommodation  for  the  faith- 
ful: architectural  beauty  was  of  very  secondary  consideration.  Still 
there  soon  took  place  a  great  change  in  the  outward  appearance  of 
things. 

St.  Conlaeth  went  to  Eome  ere  his  tragic  death  in  519,  bringing 
back  with  him,  among  other  things,  precious  vestments  for  the 
celebration  of  the  divine  liturgy.  These  were  given  over  to  Bridget; 
who,  probably  in  a  season  of  great  distress,  "gave  to  the  poor  the 
beautiful  vestments  brought  from  over  the  sea  by  Bishop  Conlaeth, 
which  he  was  wont  to  use  at  the  oblation  of  the  Sacred  Mysteries 
of  the  Altar,  in  the  festivals  of  our  Lord  and  the  Vigils  of  the 
Apostles."  * 

We  must  not  forget,  that  one  of  St.  Patrick's  contemporaries  in 
Italy,  St.  Paulinus  of  Xola,  gave  the  sacred  vessels  off  the  Altar  to 
redeem  from  captivity  some  members  of  his  flock.  The  Holy  Abbess 
thought,  in  like  manner,  that  nothing  was  too  precious  or  too  holy  to 
be  employed  in  relieving  the  pressing  needs  of  God's  people. 

Doubtless  Conlaeth  and  such  of  his  fellow-laborers  as  went  to 
Rome,  brought  back  with  them  not  only  artistic   treasures  which 


*  Colgan,  Trias  Thaum.,  p,  622. 


Christian  Art  comes  from  Rome  to  Ireland.  61 

served  as  models  for  the  quick  imitative  genius  of  the  Irish,  but  the 
forms  of  Eoman  Architecture,  painting,  sculpture,  &c.  Some  of  the 
earliest  specimens  of  the  Christian  Jeweler  and  Silversmith's  art  were 
'  the  shrine  of  gold  and  silver '  in  which  were  placed  the  relics  of  the 
holy  bishop  himself,  in  799.  Moreover,  he  is  designated  by  the  early 
chroniclers  as  the  "Brazier,"  or  worker  in  brass  of  St.  Bridget.  One 
of  his  cares,  therefore,  was  to  prepare  for  the  House  of  God  vessels 
and  ornaments  befitting  the  Sacred  Liturgy.  And  so  ecclesiastical 
art  flourished  from  the  beginning. 

Early  in  the  9tli  century, — soon  after  this  translation  of  the  relics 
of  St.  Conlaeth, — a  contemporary  Irish  writer  composed  a  Life  of 
St.  Bridget,  which  is  still  extant.  In  it  he  describes  the  interior  of 
the  cathedral  church  of  Kildare,  which  was  still  not  only  the  monas- 
tery-church of  the  place,  but  the  only  church  devoted  to  public  wor- 
ship there.  The  biographer  describes  a  miracle  which  took  place 
while  they  were  '  repairing '  or  restoring  the  sacred  edifice.  Thus 
before  the  9th  century  a  first  transformation  had  taken  place  in  the 
structure.  The  high  altar  was  richly  decorated;  on  the  right  were 
deposited  the  remains  of  St.  Conlaoth,  on  the  left  those  of  St.  Bridget, 
both  "in  monuments  adorned  Avith  various  ornaments  in  gold  and  sil- 
ver, in  which  were  set  gems  and  precious  stones;  while  above  the 
shrines  hung  crowns  of  gold  and  silver."  It  is  evident  from  the  con- 
text that  the  ground  plan  of  the  church  was  cruciform,  as  it  is  at  the 
present  day,  the  Nuns  having  a  separate  portion,  the  clergy  another 
for  vesting  and  reciting  the  divine  office,  the  laymen  and  women  oc- 
cupying distinct  places  in  the  main  aisle,  and  all  having  a  view  of  the 
Altar  during  the  celebration  of  the  Holy  Sacrifice.  The  walls  were 
of  a  '  threatening '  height,  embellished  with  mural  paintings;  "the 
greater  house,"  corresponding  probably  with  the  existing  central 
dome,  "having  within  three  places  of  prayer,  spacious  and  separated 
by  wooden  partitions."  One  of  these,  "covered  with  paintings  over 
which  were  linen  hangings,  shut  off  the  eastern  wing  of  the  church, 
extending  from  wall  to  wall." 

In  this  eastern  portion  were  celebrated  the  Divine  Mysteries.     A 


62  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

door  on  the  riglit  side  admitted  to  the  sanctuary  the  Bishop  and  his 
regular  attendants,  together  with  all  who  are  qualified  to  take  part  in 
the  sacred  functions.  Through  a  door  on  the  opposite  side  the  Ab- 
bess and  her  IsTuns,  with  the  *  widows  among  the  faithful/  ap- 
proached the  communion-table.  The  western  wing  was  partitioned  off 
in  the  same  way.  Two  doors  corresponding  to  those  in  the  eastern 
division,  admitted  the  priests  and  the  men  of  the  congregation,  and 
the  Nuns  and  women,  respectively.  The  door-way  which  gave  ad- 
mittance to  the  priests  and  persons  of  the  male  sex,  was  the  principal 
door:  it  was  distinguished  by  a  higher  degree  of  ornament.  Several 
lofty  windows  lighted  the  entire  edifice.  "And  thus," — concludes  the 
description, — "in  one  very  great  temple,  a  multitude  of  the  faithful, 
in  different  order,  rank,  sex,  and  situation,  worship  with  one  mind 
the  Almighty  Lord."  * 

Before  the  restoration  mentioned  in  this  Life  by  Cogitosus,  the 
church  (and,  in  all  likelihood,  the  monastery)  had  bjsen  twice  de- 
stroyed by  the  flames  (in  770  and  in  774).  A  community  of  monks 
had,  during  this  early  period,  been  established  among  the  oak -groves 
of  Kildare;  their  services,  both  in  the  work  of  education,  and  in 
keeping  up  the  beautiful  custom  of  perpetual  prayer  and  praise,  not 
being  subject  to  the  distractions  and  interruiDtions  to  which  the  secu- 
lar clergy  in  their  ministrations  are  constantly  liable.  In  694  died, 
murdered  by  some  person  not  mentioned  in  existing  records,  Lio- 
chene  the  Wise,  Abbot  of  Kildare.  Keating  relates,  in  speaking  of 
one  of  Liochene's  successors  in  707,  that  King  Congal  Kennmagar 
persecuted  the  church  in  those  days,  and  condemned  to  the  flames 
both  the  regular  and  secular  clergy  of  Kildare.  Were  the  conflagra- 
tions of  770  and  774  due  to  some  such  violent  act  of  persecution  ? 
Certain  it  is  that  a  great  fire  ravaged  Kildare  in  709. 

In  830  came  Ceallach  Mac  Brann,  '  who  slew  many  of  the  clerg}' 
in  their  own  house.'  In  835,  while  the  Abbot  of  Armagh  and 
his  retinue   were   on  a  visit  to  Kildare,    Fethlemid,    at  tbe  head 

*See  Petrie's  "  Round  Towers,"  p.  198. 


A  Parallel  63 

of  an  armed  force,  seized  churcli  and  abbey  and  carried  off  the 
clergy. 

These  facts  prove  that  some,  at  least,  of  the  more  powerful  chief- 
tains were  but  little  influenced  by  respect  for  religion  and  its  minis- 
ters. And  thus  we  are  prepared  for  the  coming,  in  83G,  of  a  Danish 
fleet  of  thirty  ships,  which  ascended  the  Liffey,  while  another  landed  on 
the  banks  of  the  Boyne.  The  savage  warriors  they  bore  spread  death 
and  devastation  on  every  side,  plundering  every  church  and  abbey 
they  happened  upon,  destroying  Kildare  with  fire  and  sword,  and 
carrying  away  the  shrines  of  St.  Bridget  and  St.  Conlaeth.  "From 
this  period  till  the  commencement  of  the  lltli  century,  the  annals  of 
Kildare  present  only  a  continued  series  of  Danish  rapine  and  massa- 
cre; and  scarcely  had  the  ravages  of  these  invaders  ceased,  when  the 
town  was  plundered  by  the  people  of  H3'faslan.  It  was  either  wholly 
or  in  part  destroyed  by  fire  in  1038,  1040,  1071,  1088,  and  1089; 
and,  in  1135,  the  abbess  of  the  m-onastery  was  forcibly  taken  from 
her  cloister  by  Dermod  Mac  Murrough,  King  of  Leinster,  who  com- 
pelled her  to  marry  one  of  his  followers, — on  which  occasion  not  less 
than  170  inhabitants  of  the  town  and  inmates  of  the  abbey  were 
slaughtered."* 

From  the  year  519,  when  the  holy  bishop  of  Kildare  ended  his 
labors  with  his  life,  till  1135,  when  the  fatal  name  of  Mac  Murrough 
stands  forth,  like  that  of  the  Destroyer,  amid  the  flames  of  Kildare, 
— we  see  through  what  chequered  vicissitudes  the  great  monastic  cen- 
tre founded  by  St.  Bridget,  pursued  its  career  of  blessed  usefulness. 
We  are  not  so  much  surprised  at  the  fearful  deeds  of  sacrilege  and 
massacre,  before  which  a  Christian  King  of  Leinster  did  not  draw 
back,  conscience-stricken,  in  the  12th  century,  as  at  kindred^acts  of 
murder,  rapine,  and  sacrilege  committed  in  the  8th  and  the  9th. 

We  ask  ourselves,  therefore.  What  then  were  the  lasting  fruits  of 
civilization,  gentleness  of  manners,  respect  for  human  life  and  prop- 
erty, security  of  law  and  order,  and  that  peace  and  prosperity  ever 

*  Samuel  Lewis,  "  Topographical  Diet,  of  Ireland,"  v.  li.,  p,  84. 


64  Tlie  Cause  of  Ireland. 

flowing  from  order  and  reverence  for  law, — which  were  gathered  in 
Ireland  from  that  glorious  era  of  literary  and  moral  culture,  so 
praised  by  foreign  historians  and  philosophers  ? 

Let  us,  in  order  to  give  a  satisfactory  answer  to  this  question,  go 
back  and  find,  in  the  pages  of  inspired  history,  a  period  among  God's 
people  offering  a  similar  contrast  of  extraordinary  progress  in  mate- 
rial civilization  and  religious  fidelity,  all  through  which  are  found 
red-handed  deeds  of  sacrilege  and  lawlessness  committed  by  Princes 
directly  chosen  of  God  Himself,  and  favored  witli  the  most  extraordi- 
nary graces  ever  bestowed  on  temporal  rulers. 

Kemember  the  reigns  of  Saul  and  Solomon.  The  former  suc- 
ceeded to  Samuel,  whose  glorious  administration  of  the  Confederated 
Eepublics  of  Israel  had  not  only  freed  the  land  from  foreign  domina- 
tion, confirmed  the  faith,  and  encouraged  the  piety  of  his  country- 
men, but,  by  giving  them  peace,  promoted  the  growth  of  every 
industry.  Samuel's  sanctity,  wisdom,  and  experience,  together  with 
the  assurance  of  Jehovah's  special  and  ever-present  assistance,  were 
given  to  Saul,  who  was  at  one  and  the  same  time  designated  by  the 
Divine  Will,  and  chosen  by  popular  election.  These  aids  were  to 
enable  the  new  King  to  perfect  the  conquest  of  the  national  territory, 
to  crush  effectually  and  for  ever  the  idolatrous  enemies  round  about, 
and  to  give  to  the  material  and  moral  development  of  the  Twelve 
Tribes  an  impulse  onward  and  upward  such  as  they  had  never  received. 

Who,  that  believes  in  the  divinity  of  the  Bible,  but  knows  that 
such  a  people  with  such  a  Prophet,  and  such  a  Prince,  should  have 
been  invincible  in  war,  most  blessed  in  peace,  and  irreproachable  in 
morals?  And  yet,  we  read  in  the  sacred  narrative  of  that  King's 
continued  acts  of  public  disobedience  to  the  divine  commands,  of  his 
ferocious  persecution  of  his  own  son-in-law,  the  Saviour  of  the  King- 
dom, of  four  score  and  five  priests  massacred  by  the  King's  order,  of 
an  entire  city — one  of  the  Levitical  Cities  of  Israel, — enveloped  in 
that  same  sanguinary  decree,  "both  men  and  women,  children  and 
nurslings,  oxen,  asses,  and  sheep"  being  mingled  in  one  indiscrimi- 
nate massacre! 


Conclusion  Reganling  Ireland.  65 

"Was  there,  then,  no  true  religion,  no  substantial  civilization,  no 
respect  for  humanity,  to  be  found  in  Israel  in  the  days  of  Saul  ? 

Who  does  not  know  of  the  wisdom  bestowed  upon  the  King-boy 
Solomon  on  his  accession  to  the  throne?  Who  does  not  know,  as 
well,  of  the  high  degree  of  intellectual  and  moral  culture  to  which 
David,  his  father,  the  "Sweet  Singer  of  Israel,"  had  brought  his 
people  ?  The  Psalms  sung  in  every  household  throughout  the  land, 
the  splendid  public  worship  instituted  and  ordered  by  this  pious 
prince,  are  eloquent  of  a  mighty  progress  made  since  the  days  of 
Samuel.  All  this  culture,  all  this  prosperity,  all  this  political  pre- 
dominance Solomon  carried  to  such  a  point,  that  his  name  remains 
to  this  day  among  the  populations  of  the  East,  as  that  of  a  man 
endowed  with  wisdom  and  powers  far  above  the  reach  of  ordinary 
humanity. 

And  3'et  how  low  did  Solomon  not  fall  ?  With  what  crimes  and 
immorality  did  he  not  darken  the  meridian  of  his  glory,  and  disgrace 
in  the  eyes  of  the  world  the  religion,  the  people,  the  Kame  of  the 
True  God  ? 

We  are  not  to  judge  hastily,  that,  because  almost  in  the  life-time 
of  Columbanus,  deeds  of  savage  and  sacrilegious  violence  were  com- 
mitted by  some  of  the  great  ones  of  the  land,  therefore  the  work  of 
St.  Patrick  and  St.  Bridget  had  come  to  naught.  Unfortunately, 
the  calamities  of  the  Danish  and  Norman  invasions  have  destroyed 
the  records  of  that  early  period  of  our  church  history.  But  had  not 
a  single  fragment  of  our  annals  survived,  or  a  single  monument 
remained  to  attest  the  Christian  virtues  of  the  people  or  their  una- 
bated ardor  in  the  pursuit  both  of  sanctity  and  of  learning,  the  con- 
stancy shown  by  them  as  a  nation,  while  under  the  Dane  and  the 
Norseman's  savage  rule,  and  while  mider  Anglo-Norman  domination, 
is  more  than  sufficient  to  prove  to  the  world  that  Irish  practical  faith 
and  Irish  culture  were  not  the  swift  growth  of  the  seed  cast  in  shallow 
soil,  which  gave  forth  a  fair  promise,  but  never  reached  harvest-tide. 

They  were  no  such  deceptive  prospects  of  solid  and  lasting  fruit 
which  Columkille  left  behind  when  he  sailed  for  lona,  or  which 
5 


66  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Columbanus  beheld,  as  he  turned  him  away  from  his  native  shores 
forever,  or  that  Venerable  Bede  bears  witness  to,  when  he  extols  the 
schools  which  flourish  all  over  Ireland,  as  the  nurseries  of  the  apostolic 
spirit  and  the  learning  of  Western  Europe,  and  lauds  the  boundless 
hospitality  to  strangers  of  a  pastoral  people  without  a  single  one  of 
the  great  commercial  or  industrial  resources  even  then  abounding  in 
Gaul  and  Italy  and  Spain. 

From  the  year  493,  till  the  year  836,  when  the  Dane  and  his  fleets 
appeared  simultaneously  in  the  Liffey  and  the  Boyne,  we  can  rest 
assured  that  Irishmen  labored  nobly  and  with  no  obscure  success,  to 
make  of  Ireland  a  nation  worthy  of  taking  a  foremost  seat  in  the 
great  family  of  Christian  nations.* 

*  See  Appendix  A 


III. 

Progress  Arrested. 

1.  The  Danes. 
^I^HE  Danes  and  Norwegians,  after  having  repeateuiy  ravaged  the 
fairest  and  most  populous  districts  of  Ireland,  resolved  to  make 
their  conquest  permanent.  They  seized,  therefore,  the  most  favor- 
able position  on  the  principal  estuaries,  erected  fortresses  there, 
invited  their  countrymen  to  join  them,  and  formed  prosperous 
settlements.  Thus  arose  the  cities  of  Dublin,  Waterford,  Wicklow, 
Cork,  Limerick,  and  others.  After  a  century  and  a  half  of  conflict 
vs^ith  the  native  Irish,  the  Danes  embraced  the  Christian  faith,  and 
endeavored  to  form  treaties  of  peace  and  amity  with  the  Princes 
between  wliom  the  government  of  the  Island  was  divided.  But  as 
the  Danish  cliiefs,  from  first  to  last, — those  of  Dublin  particularly, — 
assumed  the  title  of  King,  this  assumption,  apart  from  their  fanatical 
paganism,  made  conciliation  impossible. 

It  is  a  melancholy  reflection  to  any  Irish  student  of  the  history  of 
these  times,  that  the  political  division  of  the  country,  and  the  lack  of 
cohesion  among  the  people  and  their  leaders,  should  have  made  the 
invasion  of  Ireland  so  easy  to  any  warlike  adventurer,  and  enabled 
him  to  form  settlements  all  along  her  seaboard,  while  at  the  same 
time  preventing  the  settlers  from  enjoying  lasting  peace  or  security. 

Even  when,  in  980,  Malaghlin,  King  of  Ireland,  defeated  the 
Danes  with  great  slaughter  at  Taragh,  and  carried  fire  and  sword  to  the 
very  walls  of  Dublin,  he  stopped  short  in  his  victory,  accepted  a  tribute 
from  the  Danish  King,  Keginald,  and  withdrew  his  forces, — while 
the  defeated  and  despairing  Dane  went  on  a  pilgrimage  to  lona,  to 

(67) 


68  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

implore  St.  Columkille  to  secure  himself  and  his  followers  in  their 
possessions  !  Eeginald  died  at  lona.  It  was  the  hour  to  strike  for 
the  national  liberation.  But  no  heroic  voice  aroused  the  people;  no 
heroic  hand  was  raised  to  smite  the  invaders. 

Again,  in  the  year  1000,  a  still  more  favorable  opportunity 
offered.  Brian  Boroimhe  captured  Dublin  itself.  Patriotism  and 
policy  counseled  the  prompt  expulsion  of  the  Vikings  from  every 
inch  of  Irish  soil, — from  Dublin,  their  chief  stronghold  first,  and 
then  in  succession  from  all  their  other  settlements.  It  was  the 
golden  opportunity  sent  by  Providence.  The  victorious  Irish  only 
made  "concessions"  and  then  disappeared,  leaving  the  Danes  free  to 
fortify  their  positions  everywhere.  Then  came  the  war  of  1014,  and 
the  battle  of  Clontarf.  The  Danes  were  defeated;  the  Irish  army 
won  a  dear  and  an  incomplete  victory.  Dublin  remained  in  the 
hands  of  the  strangers;  so  did  every  one  of  their  maritime  settle- 
ments. ISTo  statesman,  no  soldier  was  found  among  the  Irish  allied 
hosts  to  avenge  the  death  of  the  magnanimous  old  King,  by  uniting 
their  forces  and  driving  the  panic-stricken  Norsemen  from  the  land 
once  and  for  ever. 

On  the  contrary,  in  1038  we  find  the  now  converted  Danes  giving 
Dublin  a  Danish  bishop,  and  building  him  the  Cathedral  of  Christ 
Church.  Their  power  waxes  so  strong  that  they  send  a  large  fleet  to 
Wales,  two  years  in  succession,  to  aid  one  of  their  Welsh  allies. 
Both  expeditions  proved  disastrous,  the  Danes  being  driven  back  to 
Dublin  by  their  enemies.  And  no  Irish  King  either  -watched  these 
events,  or  cared  to  profit  by  them  to  vindicate  the  independence  of 
his  native  land,  or  to  recover  the  integrity  of  the  national  territory ! 

In  10G6  a  still  more  favorable  opportunity  presented  itself  to 
achieve  a  result,  Avhich  it  is  impossible  to  believe  was  not  a  cherished 
dream  of  the  Irish  heart.  The  Danes  of  Dublin  were  attacked  by 
Godred  Crovan,  King  of  Man;  the  city  was  taken,  Leinster  was  over- 
run by  the  conqueror,  who,  in  his  turn,  assumed  the  title  of  King  of 
Ireland,  and  bore  it  till  his  death. 

Were  there  no  patriot  Bishops  or  Princes  left  in  the  land  to  call 


The  Danes.  69 

upon  the  Irish  to  form  au  alliance  with  Dane  against  Manx  or  Manx 
against  Dane,  and  thus  crush  one  with  the  other?  During  the  re- 
mainder of  the  century,  Danish  Dublin  is  permitted  to  make  war  on 
Danish  Waterford  and  to  ruin  it  utterly;  then  all  the  Danish  colonies 
unite  against  Cork,  and  are  defeated  by  the  latter.  But  the  Irish 
Kings  do  not  appear  on  the  scene  to  take  advantage  of  these  dissen- 
sions. And  so  ends  the  11th  century,  a  century  illuminated,  in  the 
eyes  of  the  Irish  patriot,  by  the  solitary  splendors  of  the  victory  at 
Clontarf.  And  then  dawned  for  us  the  dark  and  fateful  Twelfth. 
How  came  it  about  that,  in  1131,  Turlogh  O'Brien,  King  of  Ireland, 
accepts  from  the  hand  of  King  Henry  I.  of  England  an  archbishop 
of  Dublin  (Gregory)  consecrated  by  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury? 
Had  our  Hierarchy  so  degenerated  that  they  were  utterly  forgetful  of 
the  privileges  and  dignity  of  their  national  Church,  allowing  a  for- 
eign King  to  nominate  and  a  foreign  prelate  to  consecrate  an  arch- 
bishop for  an  Irish  see,  without  resistance  or  remonstrance  ? 

And  then  we  find  Dermod  Mac  Murrough,  King  of  Leinster, 
ravaging  the  country  around  Dublin  as  he  had  ravaged  and  ruined 
Kildare,  and  blotting  out  from  the  city  and  its  territory  the  last 
vestige  of  Danish  power.  We  could  have  forgiven  him  all  his  deeds 
of  blood  and  rapine,  had  he  only  appealed  to  Irish  Princes,  Prelates, 
Priests,  and  People,  to  unite  in  one  mighty  bond  all  the  nation's  vital 
forces,  and  make  Ireland  mistress  of  her  own  destinies.  The  civili- 
zation which  had,  since  the  days  of  Charlemagne,  been  struggling, 
all  over  Continental  Europe,  to  a  higher  level,  like  grain  sown  in 
autumn  growing  timidly  through  the  frosts  of  a  late  spring, — would 
have  shed  its  blessings  on  Ireland.  The  Danish  period  in  our  Island 
had  more  than  one  resemblance  to  the  Feudalism  which  had 
destroyed  the  first  growth  of  Christian  civilization  on  the  Continent, 
and  so  long  delayed  and  neutralized  the  creative  action  of  the  Church. 
The  very  evils  of  which  St.  Bernard  complains  in  his  Life  of  our 
St.  Malachy,  had  their  parallel  in  France,  Germany,  Northern  Spain, 
and  Italy.  But  these  evils  did  not  altogether  stop  the  growth  of  the 
glorious  seeds  of  education  and  morality,  which  the  Church  of  Christ 


70  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

had  never  ceased  to  sow  and  cultivate  in  the  minds  and  hearts  of 
every  nation. 

If  we  take  into  consideration  the  disadvantages  of  Ireland's 
insular  position,  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  she  was  not  ready 
to  take  her  place, — a  not  obscure  or  inglorious  one, — in  the  forward 
movement  inaugurated  in  Christendom  by  the  Crusades. 

It  is  not  denied  that,  during  the  three  centuries  and  more  of  the 
partial  occupation  of  the  Island  by  the  "Ostmen,"  their  presence 
caused  serious  disorders  in  the  entire  social  structure,  in  ecclesiastical 
discipline,  intellectual  and  moral  progress.  "Wherever  they  came, 
they  desecrated  churches,  burned  monasteries,  destroyed  books, 
pictures,  and  sculptures;  murdered  priests,  monks,  and  poets.  To 
the  ferocity  of  the  wild  beast  they  joined  the  persevering  energy  of 
the  Teuton;  their  arms  were  better  than  those  of  the  Irish,  and  per- 
haps they  had  more  skill  in  handling  them.  Confusion  and  lamen- 
tation were  soon  in  every  part  of  the  island.  Men,  after  a  while, 
seeing  the  continued  success  of  these  odious  pagans,  began  to  doubt 
of  Providence  and  grow  slack  in  faith.  .  .  .  The  generosity  toward 
the  church  of  the  converts  of  St.  Patrick  underwent  a  selfish  but  not 
unnatural  reaction  in  their  descendants."  *  Such  is  the  judgment  of 
Mr.  Thomas  Arnold.  To  his  testimony  let  us  add  that  of  the  great 
Irish  scholar,  Eugene  O'Curry.  "When  foreign  invasion  aiid  war 
had  cooled  down  the  fervid  devotion  of  the  native  chiefs,  and  had 
distracted  and  broken  up  the  long-established  reciprocity  of  good 
offices  between  the  Church  and  the  State,  as  well  as  the  central 
executive  controlling  power  of  the  nation,  the  chief  and  the  ]ioble 
began  to  feel  that  the  lands  which  they  or  their  ancestors  had  offered 
to  the  church,  might  now,  with  little  impropriety,  be  taken  back,  to 
be  applied  to  their  own  purposes,  quieting  their  conscience  bj  the 
necessity  of  the  case."  f 

There  were   other   changes,  however,  of  a  far   more  scandalous 


*  "  Catholic  Dictionary,"  art.  Irish  Church. 

t  O'Curry,  "  Materials  of  Ancient  Irish  History,"  343. 


The  Danes.  71 

nature,  which  arose  out  of  the  prolonged  disturbance,  the  moral 
chaos  created  by  the  successive  bands  of  Ostmen,  who  ravaged  and 
held  the  entire  Irish  coasts,  prevented  all  communication  with  Eome, 
the  great  centre  of  authority  and  enforcer  of  discipline,  while  they 
spread  ruin  and  desolation  throughout  the  interior  of  the  island. 
The  interior,  indeed,  they  never  succeeded  in  maintaining  possession 
of;  the  wretched  kinglings,  who  could  not  or  would  not  combine  to 
resist  or  drive  out  the  Pagans,  managed  so  to  harass  their  bands, 
as  to  render  impossible  their  retaining  a  foothold  at  any  distance 
beyond  the  seaboard. 

But,  although  the  Brehon  law  continued  to  govern  the'nation, 
some  of  the  worst  eifects  of  Continental  Feudalism  were  not  slow  in 
making  their  appearance.  Not  only,  as  we  have  seen,  did  the  great 
families  make  no  scruple  to  take  back  the  grants  of  land  made  to  the 
Church  in  the  first  age  of  fervor  succeeding  the  introduction  of 
Christianity,  but  they  endeavored,  not  without  partial  success  at 
least,  in  thrusting  their  sons  into  the  episcopal  office,  and  in  making 
this  an  heir-loom.  We  have  in  the  archiepiscopal  see  of  Armagh,  at 
the  close  of  the  11th  and  during  wellnigh  the  first  half  of  the  12th 
century,  a  scandal  strikingly  similar  to  that  which  had  fallen  on  the 
Koman  Church  and  See  during  the  preceding  centuries:  powerful 
families  making  superhuman  efforts  to  possess  and  transmit  to  their 
sons  the  office  and  influence  of  great  central  sees.  In  Ireland  the 
Clan-law  favored  these  usurpations. 

St.  Malachy,  Archbishop  of  Armagh,  who  died  in  1148,  gave  his 
friend,  St.  Bernard  of  Clairvaux,  an  account  which  sheds  a  vivid 
light  on  the  condition  of  the  Irish  Church  at  that  period.  For  two 
hundred  years  one  of  the  noble  families  in  the  north  had  claimed  and 
held  the  primatial  chair  as  an  heir-loom.  During  fifteen  generations 
the  sacred  office  of  St.  Patrick  was  usurped  successively  by  the  mem- 
bers of  this  family.  Of  these  fifteen  Archbishops  only  six  were  ever 
in  holy  orders.  They  delegated  their  jurisdiction  to  others,  Avhile 
enjoying  the  temporalities  of  the  see.  They  were  married  laymen. 
St.  Malachy,  in  1135,  was  chosen  by  Celsus,  the  last  of  the  fifteen,  to 


73  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

be  his  successor.  This  was  in  derogation  to  the  traditional  claim  of 
the  usurping  family;  and  was  resisted  by  them.  Murchadh,  who 
was  substituted  perforce  to  Malachy,  only  died  in  1133;  and  then 
alone  was  Malachy  allowed  to  take  peaceful  possession. 

This  is  only  an  instance  of  the  grave  disorders  ever  sure  to  follow 
on  successive  invasions  and  barbaric  warfare  and  misrule.  There 
can  be  no  discipline  without  recognized  and  ever-jn-esent  authority; 
but  the  insular  position  of  the  Irish  Church,  while  the  Northern 
Barbarians  held  the  sea-ports  and  swept  the  coasts  with  their  fleets, 
rendered  all  communication  with  the  great  central  authority  of  Rome 
either  impossible  or  exceedingly  precarious.  And  so,  there  being  no 
one  to  curb  the  ambition,  pretensions,  and  covetousness  of  the  great 
nobles,  or  to  regulate  the  nomination  to  church  dignities  and  bene- 
fices,— the  world  had  its  own  way.  Irish  human  nature,  like  human 
nature  everywhere,  needs  the  grace  of  God  and  the  action  of  God's 
lawful  representatives  to  keep  it  steadfastly  on  the  high  level  of 
supernatural  goodness  and  progress.  Where  these  necessary  aids  and 
restraints  are  lacking,  the  most  privileged  nature,  like  the  richest 
soil,  deprived  of  the  husbandman's  watchful  care,  is  overgrown  with 
hurtful  weeds. 

That,  in  spite  of  these  acknowledged  disorders,  both  the  ancient 
culture  of  the  Irish  race  and  the  supernatural  virtues  Christianity 
had  grafted  on  such  goodly  tree,  had  only  degenerated  somewhat 
from  their  former  excellence,  and  not  perished  amid  the  inroads  of  a 
ferocious  Paganism, — is  a  fact  demonstrated  not  only  by  the  facts  re- 
corded in  the  preceding  Chapter,  but  by  the  era  of  trial  which  fol- 
lowed, beginning  with  the  )'ear  1169. 

Before  that  fatal  year,  however,  St.  Malachy  succeeded  in  reor- 
ganizing the  Irish  Hierarchy,  and  in  effecting  reforms  which  prom- 
ised a  new  era  of  progress  to  the  Church  and  the  Xation.  In  1152 
was  held  the  National  Synod  of  Kells,  Cardinal  Paparo,  the  Pope's 
legate,  presiding.  The  pallium  was  bestowed  on  the  Archbishops  of 
Armagh,  Dublin,  Tuam,  and  Cashel,  distributing  between  them  the 
thirty-four  suffragan  sees  on  the  Island.     The  episcopal  dignity  was 


Cause  of  National  WeaTcness.  73 

thus  rescued  from  all  subjection  to  any  lay  power;  and  from  the 
tribal  lands  assigned  to  the  parochial  clergy  it  was  ordained  that, 
tithes  should  be  paid  annually. 

Peogress  Further  Arrested. 

3.   The  Anglo-Normans. 

In  1152,  while  the  Holy  See  through  its  legate  and  the  powerful 
influence  of  Archbishop  St.  Malachy,  was  restoring  discipline  and 
order  in  the  Irish  Church,  Turlough  O'Connor,  King  of  Connaught, 
was  titular  Monarch  of  Ireland.  He  died  in  115G,  and  one  of  the 
Ulster  family  of  O'Keill,  Murtagh  O'Loughlin  O'Keill,  succeeded 
him. 

It  will  help  the  general  reader  to  understand  the  causes  of  the 
national  weakness  in  Ireland,  to  know  that  there  had  then  sprung  up 
four  confederacies,  or  groups  of  allied  Septs,  nearly  corresponding  to 
the  modern  division  into  provinces.  Each  of  these  groups  had  an 
acknowledged  overlord  or  King  of  their  own:  the  O'Neills  claiming 
the  allegiance  of  the  Septs  of  Ulster  and  Meath,  the  O'Connors  that 
of  Connaught,  the  O'Briens  that  of  Munster,  and  the  Mac  Mur- 
roughs  that  of  Leinster.  The  O'Neill's,  again,  claimed,  as  an  hered- 
itary right,  the  rank  of  Monarch  of  all  Ireland,  But  this  was  dis- 
puted by  the  other  overlords,  ambition  and  might  deciding  in  favor 
of  the  boldest.  The  Irish  chieftains,  during  the  last  three  or  four 
centuries,  had  seen  enough,  or  heard  enough  of  the  doings  of  Feudal- 
ism on  the  European  Continent,  to  conceive  the  desire  of  perpetu- 
ating, each  in  his  own  family,  both  the  absolute  title  to  the  rank  he 
held,  and  to  the  land,  on  which  all  social  greatness  and  stability  re- 
posed. These  men  began  to  consider  both  the  country  and  the  peo- 
ple as  things  belonging  to  themselves. 

Just  then,  as  if  to  awaken  the  Irish  people  from  their  lethargic 
acquiescence  in  these  usurpations  and  encroachments,  happened  the 
invasion  of  the  first  Normans  under  Strongbow,  Earl  of  Pem- 
broke. 


74  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

The  first  question  which  presents  itself  to  the  mind  to  ask  is, 
"  What  brought  to  Ireland  Pembroke  and  his  Adventurers  ?  "  The 
answer  to  that  must  be,  that  just  as  the  Northmen  were  brought  in 
former  times  to  France  by  Land-Hui^gee,  and  as  the  Danes,  their 
cousins,  were  brought  to  Ireland  by  the  same,  so,  in  succession,  the 
Normans,  finding  in  their  portion  of  France  no  more  unappropriated 
lands  to  satisfy  that  hunger,  crossed  over  and  took  England;  and 
now  here  they  are  in  Ireland. 

There  is  no  use  in  turning  to  the  right  or  to  the  left  to  find  a  mo- 
tive for  their  invasion  of  a  Christian  country,  a  peaceable  and  un- 
offending people.  The  true  impelling  force  which  drove  Strongbow 
to  the  Irish  shores,  was  the  land-hunger.  This  was  also  the  motive 
which  impelled  Henry  II.  to  follow  with  a  powerful  armament  after 
Strongbow. 

They  tell  us,  to  be  sure,  that  after  the  return  of  Cardinal  Paparo 
from  Ireland,  the  Holy  See,  anxious  to  urge  forward  in  Ireland  the 
religious  reforms  planned  in  the  Synod  of  Kells,  gave  the  Island  over 
to  the  King  of  England.  It  would  be,  in  the  circumstances,  which 
prompted  misinformed  Eome  to  adopt  such  a  course,  a  grave  w^arning 
against  yielding  in  the  present  to  similar  influences. 

But  we  do  not  believe  in  the  fact  of  Pope  Adrian's  gift.  Land- 
HunCtEE  was  at  the  bottom  of  it  all. 

We  must,  liowever,  examine  here  tlie  pretence  of  bringing  back 
the  Irish  to  a  purer  Christianity. 

The  Anglo-Normans  came  with  Strongbow,  and  Miles  de  Cogan, 
and  Henry  II.  It  were  foreign  to  our  purpose  to  discuss  here  the  in- 
ternal dissensions  which  afforded  a  motive  to  this  new  invasion,  or 
the  very  doubtful  claims,  even  when  founded  on  Pontifical  Authority, 
which  were  alleged  by  Henry  himself.  They  came;  they  possessed 
themselves  of  most  of  the  Danish  colonies,  with  strips  of  territory 
round  about  the  towns  and  fortified  positions  they  held.  They  came 
to  conquer  and  to  rule  by  the  sword.  No  pretence  was  ever  so  hol- 
low, or  maintained  by  such  unhallowed  means,  as  that  put  forward 
by  the  invaders, — that  they  had  come  to  reform  a  degenerate  Chris- 


Hypocritical  Motives  Assigned  for  it.  75 

tian  people,  to  reclaim  Ireland  from  the  semi-paganism  and  barbarism 
into  which  it  had  lapsed. 

The  two  races  struggling  thenceforward  for  mastery  on  Irish  soil 
were  Catholic,  both  of  them,  and  both  civilized;  for  the  pretended 
superiority  of  the  invaders  consisted,  like  the  superiority  of  the  Danes, 
in  being  better  equipped  for  war  on  sea  and  land,  in  being  more  ad- 
vanced in  the  mechanical  and  industrial  arts,  and  in  being  nearer, 
geographically,  to  Italy,  whence  all  social,  intellectual,  and  moral 
progress  spread  over  the  European  continent,  like  life-giving  light 
from  the  sun. 

Unfortunately  for  the  false  plea  set  up  by  England,  and  the  falla- 
cies of  which  still  maintain  their  hold  on  the  greater  portion  of  the 
English-speaking  world, — impartial  and  incorruptible  History  is  there 
to  prove,  that  the  English,  in  planting  themselves  in  Ireland,  made 
little  or  no  effoi't  to  impart  to  the  Irish  the  boon  of  that  pretended 
higher  civilization,  and  that  their  attempts  to  reform  ecclesiastical 
abuses,  indiscipline,  or  immorality,  were  just  about  as  serious  and  as 
successful  as  the  labors  by  them  undertaken  to  reform  and  convert 
the  Hindoos,  the  Burmese,  or  the  Chinese  in  modern  times. 

England  was  a  Christian  Catholic  nation  the  day  on  which  her 
first  king  set  his  foot  on  the  shores  of  Ireland.  If  she  came,  in  the 
persons  of  her  sovereign,  her  warriors,  her  priests,  and  her  magis- 
trates to  labor  seriously  for  the  elevation  of  a  neighboring,  kindred, 
and  Catholic  people  to  a  higher  degree  of  civilization,  to  a  purer  doc- 
trine, a  more  enlightened  faith,  a  severer  morality;  if  she  wislied  to 
establish  wiser  laws,  a  better  regulated  government;  to  bestow  on  the 
land  educational  establishments,  Avhich  should  perfect  and  complete 
those  already  in  existence,  once  so  flourishing,  and  fallen  into  decay; 
to  reconstruct  the  holy  places  ruined  by  the  heathen  Ostmen,  to 
restore  monasteries  and  churches, — and  extend  to  their  brother- 
Christians  of  Irish  origin  the  right  hand  of  Christian  fellowship  and 
fraternity  while  working  together  for  a  common  and  most  holy  pur- 
pose;— where  is  the  historical  evidence  of  the  fact  that,  from  the  days 
of  the  Second  to  those  of  the  Eighth  Henry,  any  such  noble  attempt. 


76  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

or  any  concerted  action  towards  carrying  it  out,  had  been  thought  of 
by  English  Kings,  Nobles,  Prelates,  or  Priests  ? 

What,  on  the  contrary,  has  been  the  invariable  line  of  policy  pur- 
sued toward  the  native  Irish  race,  all  through  these  long  centuries, 
when  Catholic  England  had  not  the  pretext  of  difference  of  creed  ou 
which  to  found  her  invariable  hostility,  her  incredibly  unwise  policy, 
and  her  savage  cruelty  towards  the  people,  who  in  past  ages  had  so 
hospitably  received,  entertained,  and  educated  her  own  Thanes, 
Bishops,  and  Priests? 

Let  us  here,  as  a  preliminary  to  a  full  and  satisfactory  answer, 
place  side  by  side,  for  the  calm  consideration  of  the  reader,  the  con- 
tradictory testimonies  of  two  Englishmen,  one  the  Historian  Froude 
still  livhig,  the  other.  Sir  John  Da  vies,  the  illustrious  Attorney  Gen- 
eral of  James  I.  in  Ireland. 

Mr.  Froude  says  of  the  policy  pursued  by  England  in  the  sister- 
isle: 

"Everything  which  she  most  valued  for  herself — her  laws  and  lib- 
erties, her  orderly  and  settled  government,  the  most  ample  security 
for  person  and  property, — England's  first  desire  was  to  give  to  Ireland 
in  fullest  measure."  * 

Sir  John  Davies,  who  while  fulfilling  in  Ireland  his  high  judicial 
functions,  was  at  the  very  source  of  authentic  information  on  the  sub- 
ject, and  made  of  the  study  of  the  archives  a  special  occupation, 
writes  as  follows: 

"This  then  I  note  as  a  great  defect  in  the  civil  policy  of  this 
Kingdom, — i]i  that  for  the  space  of  350  years  at  least  after  the  con- 
quest first  attempted,  the  English  laws  were  not  communicated  to  the 
Irish,  nor  the  benefit  and  protection  thereof  allowed  unto  them; 
though  they  earnestly  desired  and  sought  the  same.  For  as  long  as 
they  were  out  of  the  protection  of  the  laws,  so  as  every  Englishman 
might  oppress,  kill,  and  spoil  them  without  controuhnent,  how  was  it 
possible  they  could  be  other  than  outlawes  and  enemies  to  the  crown 

*  "  The  English  in  Ireland,"  vol.  i.,  p.  13. 


Contradictory  Testimonies  of  Froude  and  Davies.  77 

of  England  ?  If  the  King  would  not  admit  them  to  tlie  condition  of 
subjects,  how  could  they  learn  to  acknowledge  and  obey  him  as  their 
sovereign  ?  "When  they  might  not  converse  or  commerce  with  civil- 
ized men,  nor  enter  into  any  town  or  city  without  peril  of  their  lives, 
whither  should  they  fly  but  into  the  woods  and  mountains,  and  there 
live  in  a  wild  and  barbarous  manner."  * 

In  another  work  this  illustrious  jurist  and  statesman,  commenting 
on  the  "Statutes  of  Kilkenny,"  of  which  we  shall  presently  speak, 
says: 

"  It  is  manifest  that  such  as  had  the  government  of  Ireland,  under 
the  crown  of  England,  did  intend  to  make  a  perpetual  separation  and 
enmity  between  the  English  and  the  Irish,  pretending  that  the  English 
should  i?i  the  end  root  oiit  the  Irish:  which  the  English  not  being  able 
to  do  caused  a  perpetual  war  between  the  nations,  which  continued 
four  hundred  and  odd  years,  and  would  have  lasted  to  the  world's 
end,  if,  in  the  end  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  reign,  the  Irish  had  not  been 
broken  and  conquered  by  the  sword,  and  since  the  beginning  of  his 
Majesty's  (James  I.)  reign  had  not  been  protected  and  governed  by 
the  laws."f 

These  tAvo  unimpeachable  witnesses  are  more  than  sufficient  to 
upset  the  gratuitous  affirmation  of  one  so  reckless  and  untrustworthy 
as  Froude.  Other  witnesses,  however,  will  appear  in  the  course  of 
the  argument  to  take  away  the  last  shadow  of  authority  of  one  whose 
very  name  is  identified  with  historical  fraud. 

Let  us  note  the  words  italicized  in  the  quotation,  "pretending,  no 
doubt,  that  the  English  should  root  out  the  Irish."  That  this,  and 
not  the  specious  purpose  of  civilizing  a  savage  race,  or  reforming  a 
corrupt  Christian  peo})le, — was  the  aim  of  the  English  conquest  and 
the  constant  purpose  of  the  English  governors  in  Ireland,  is  shown  by 
English  writers.  AVhen  we  come  to  describe  the  means  resorted  to  in 
order  to  carry  out  such  purpose,  Ave  shall  see  hew  perfectly  these 

*  Davies'  "  Discovery  of  the  True  Caiises  why  Ireland  was  never  Subdued," 
&c.,  p.  90. 

t  Davies'  "  Tracts,"  p.  85. 


78  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

squared  with  the  inhuman  and  unchristian  motives  of  English 
rule. 

From  the  very  first  stage  of  the  Anglo-Norman  invasion,  we  find 
the  native  inhabitants  contemptuously  mentioned  as  "the  Irishry," 
"the  Wilde  Irish";  and  later  they  are  invariably  designated  in  official 
documents  as  "the  Irish  Enemy,"  for  whom  there  should  be  neither 
pity,  nor  clemency. 

We  are  unwilling  to  believe  for  a  moment,  in  the  absence  of  the 
most  peremptory  proof,  that  the  Holy  See  ever  authorized  the  claims 
or  reforming  projects  of  Henry  II.,  or  that  he  and  the  adventurers 
who  preceded  him,  had  at  heart  any  other  object  than  that  of  con- 
quest. 

There  had  been  between  the  peoples  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland, 
ever  since  St.  Patrick  had  put  an  end  to  the  slave-trading  expedi- 
tions, too  continuous  and  brotherly  an  intercourse,  too  generous  an 
interchange  of  hospitality  and  spiritual  benefit  lovingly  bestowed,  on 
the  one  hand,,  and  of  heartfelt  gratitude  and  friendship,  on  the  other, 
to  predispose  the  Anglo-Saxon  people  of  England,  either  to  regard 
the  Irish  as  savages  or  degraded  Christians,  or  to  willing  assail  them 
as  barbarous  foes  with  whom  there  could  be  no  peace. 

The  same  lust  of  conquest  which  had  induced  the  Northmen  to 
invade  France  and  their  descendants  to  possess  themselves  of  Sicily, 
Naples,  and  England,  the  same  unchristian  and  tyrannical  spirit 
which  placed  so  heavy  a  yoke  on  the  conquered  Anglo-Saxons,  were 
manifest  in  the  invasion  of  Ireland,  and  in  the  treatment  of  its  inhab- 
itants for  centuries. 

With  Henry  II.  came  over  to  Ireland  one  of  those  official  clerical 
libellers,  whose  works,  apart  from  any  other  evidence,  go  to  prove  the 
passionate  antipathy  of  race  against  race,  instead  of  that  priestly 
charity  which  should  ever  distinguish  the  words  and  writings  of  a 
minister  of  the  Gospel.  This  man  (Gerald  Barry)  is  known  hi 
history  as  Giraldus  Cambrensis,  a  Norman  born  in  Wales,  and 
unacquainted  with  or  forgetful  of  the  priceless  services  which  Irish 
Saints  and  Scholars  had  rendered  to  the  land  of  his  birth.     He  be- 


Testimony  of  Hume.  79 

came  the  hired  apologist  of  Anglo-Normon  ambition  and  misrule  in 
Ireland,  and  set  about  calumniating  the  Irish  Church  and  people,  in 
order  to  justify  in  the  ej^es  of  the  Roman  Court  excesses  and  barbar- 
ities that  merited  the  reprobation  of  all  Christendom.  He  succeeded 
in  imposing  on  so  true  and  great  a  man  as  Pope  Alexander  III.  We 
need  not  wonder,  however,  that  a  Welsh  Monk  should  be  perverse 
enough  to  imagine  and  to  write  in  the  12th  century,  such  atrocious 
accusations  against  a  whole  people,  when  an  English  Historian  in  the 
19th  would  dare  to  brave  the  censure  and  contempt  of  the  world  by 
adding  to  his  "History  of  England"  such  a  master-piece  of  effrontery 
as  "The  English  in  Ireland." 

Another  English  Historian,  Hume,  differs  widely  from  Mr. 
Froude,  although  he  is  scarcely  less  bitter  in  his  hostility  to  Ireland 
and  the  Irish.  Speaking  of  the  English  invasion  and  the  policy 
pursued  by  the  conquerors,  he  says  : 

"The  English  carried  still  further  their  ill-judged  tyranny. 
Instead  of  inviting  the  Irish  to  adopt  the  more  civilized  customs  of 
their  conquerors,  they  even  refused,  though  earnestly  solicited,  to 
communicate  to  them  the  privilege  of  their  laws,  and  everywhere 
marked  them  out  as  aliens  and  enemies.  Throwm  out  of  the  pro- 
tection of  justice,  the  natives  could  find  no  security  but  in  force;  and 
flying  the  neighborhood  of  cities,  which  they  could  not  approach  with 
safety,  they  sheltered  themselves  in  their  marshes  and  forests  from 
the  insolence  of  their  inhuman  masters.  Being  treated  like  wild 
beasts,  they  became  such;  and,  joining  the  ardor  of  revenge  to  their 
untamed  barbarity,  they  grew  every  day  more  intractable  and  dan- 
gerous." * 

Hume  adopts,  without  verifying  the  truth  of  it,  the  common 
assertion  of  English  writers,  that  the  native  Irish  populations  were 
barbarians  in  1169,  and  that  the  barbarities  inflicted  on  them,  only 
made  them  still  more  barbarous.  This  assumption  is  contrary  to  the 
known  truth;  and  is  in  no  way  necessary  either  to  excuse  or  to 
explain  the  violence  used  toward  them. 

*  "  History  of  England,"  vol.  v.,  p,  412. 


80  llie  Cause  of  Ireland. 

The  fact  is,  tliat  the  Irish,  riglitly  or  wrongh^,  looked  upon  the 
Normans  as  the  unjust  invaders  of  England,  and  as  the  kindred  of 
the  Ostmen  who  had  inflicted  such  misery  on  Ireland,  and  whom  the 
Irish  had  at  length  won  over  to  the  Christian  religion,  and  made  one 
with  themselves  in  faith,  language,  and  nationality.  The  intolerable 
oppression  exercised  toward  the  Anglo-Saxons  by  William  the  Con- 
queror and  his  successors,  had  created  in  Ireland  no  little  sympathy 
for  the  former  and  no  little  hatred  of  the  latter.  All  English 
historians  describe  the  long  guerilla  wai'fare  carried  on  by  the  Saxons 
against  their  oppressors.  The  ballad-poetry  of  the  country  has 
immortalized  this  spirit  of  resistance  in  Eobin  Hood  and  his 
Foresters. 

"Some  bold  men,"  says  Macaulay,  "the  favorite  heroes  of  our 
oldest  ballads,  betook  themselves  to  the  woods,  and  there,  in  defiance 
of  curfew-laws  and  forest  laws,  waged  a  predatory  war  against  their 
oppressors.  Assassination  was  an  event  of  daily  occurrence.  ]\Iany 
Normans  suddenly  disappeared,  leaving  no  trace.  The  corpses  of 
many  were  found  bearing  the  marks  of  violence.  Death  by  torture 
was  denounced  against  the  murderers,  and  strict  search  Avas  made  for 
them,  but  generally  in  vain;  foi'  the  wlwie  nation  was  in  conspiracy 
to  screen  them.'''' 

Again  we  beg  the  reader  to  bear  in  mind  this  passage,  particu- 
larly the  concluding  sentence.  Those  who  invaded  Ireland  were  not 
the  Anglo-Saxons, — the  English  proper;  they  were  the  Normans, 
equally  feared  and  detested  by  English  and  Irish  alike.  The  latter, 
as  poorly  equipped  for  resistance  in  the  open  field  as  their  Saxon 
brethren  across  the  Channel,  had  recourse  to  the  only  legitimate 
means  of  Avarfare  in  their  power  both  against  Henry  II.,  and  against 
his  successors.  That  warfare  has  been  carried  on  ever  since;  for 
Ireland  never  has  been  wholly  conquered,  nor  has  her  people  ever 
bent  the  neck  to  the  yoke. 

But  we  are,  just  at  present,  examining  the  assertion  of  such  men 
as  Fronde  and  Giraldus  Cambrensis. 

It  is  necessarv  that  we  should  demonstrate  to  evidence,  that  the 


The  Anglo-Normans  Civilized  hij  the  Irish.  81 

I 
English  did  not  act  in  Ireland  as  one  Christian  nation  aiding  another . 

by  gentle  and  Christian  means  to  rise  to  a  higher  level  of  civilization. 

It  is  a  fact  that  ere  a  second  generation  of  Anglo-lSTormans  had 
passed  away  on  Irish  soil,  the  gentle  virtues  of  the  people  whom  they 
had  at  first  been  taught  to  hate  or  despise,  had  so  gained  upon  their 
esteem  and  affections,  that  they  adopted  their  customs,  their  dress, 
their  very  language.  It  was  the  fulfilment  of  the  social  law  so  often 
manifested  in  History, — that  where  a  rude  and  warlike  race  possesses 
itself  of  a  country  inhabited  by  a  people  intellectually  and  morally 
superior,  the  conqueror  is  soon  subdued  by  the  conquered,  and  lifted 
up  to  the  latter's  level  of  civilization.  The  comj)laint  of  the  Norman 
rulers  of  Ireland  soon  was,  that  the  great  feudal  nobles  living  outside 
the  Pale  or  on  its  borders  were  fast  becoming  iiJsis  Hibernis  Hiher- 
niores,  more  Irish  than  the  Irish  themselves. 

"The  Normans  who  fixed  their  homes  in  Ireland,"  says  a  recent 
and  well  known  writer,  "naturally  modified  their  policy.  They 
desired  to  live  in  friendship  with  the  natives,  and  even  to  protect 
them  from  new  aggressions.  The  succeeding  generation  came  to 
have  some  affection  for  the  country  and  the  people;  they  often  took 
Irish  wives,  and  their  children  were  fostered  in  Irish  families.  Their 
heirs  spoke  the  native  tongue,  wore  the  national  mantle  and  barret, 
called  themselves  by  native  names,  cherished  the  legends  and  laws  of 
the  Celts;  and,  when  in  turn  they  came  to  rule,  entertained  bards 
and  Brehons,  and  desired  to  be  no  more  than  Irish  chiefs.  The 
great  proprietors  who  lived  in  England,  the  new  arrivals  who  in  each 
reign  came  in  fresh  swarms,  as  men  visit  a  wreck  on  a  neighboring 
coast,  in  search  of  plunder,  and  the  officials  of  the  Pale,  hated  these 
'  old  English ' — so  they  came  to  be  called — as  bitterly  as  they  hated 
the  natives.  They  could  not  invariably  be  relied  on  to  promote  the 
Lord  Deputy's  designs;  they  began  to  have  some  pride  of  country, 
and  were  not  always  ready  to  make  war  on  their  kith  and  kin  in  the 
interests  of  the  Pale.  To  check  these  offenses  a  law  was  passed  in  the 
reign  of  Edward  III.,  which  peremptorily  forbade  these  relations 
with  the  natives  under  penalty  of  forfeiture  or  death.  To  speak  the 
6 


82  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

native  tongue,  to  use  an  Irish  name,  to  wear  the  Irish  apparel,  or  to 
adopt  any  of  the  customs  of  the  country, — '  anie  guise  or  fashion  of 
the  Irish' — was  punishable  by  loss  of  their  entire  lands;  but  to 
marry  an  Irish-woman,  to  intrust  their  children  to  an  Irish  nurse, 
or  give  them  Irish  sponsors  at  baptism, — these  grave  offenses  were 
declared  high  treason.  All  men  of  Irish  blood  were  forbidden  to 
reside  within  a  walled  town,  and,  lest  the  Celts  should  obtain  influ- 
ence in  a  powerful  spiritual  confederacy,  no  native  was  to  be  received 
as  a  postulant  in  any  monastery  within  the  Pale."  * 

Such  legislation,  such  a  policy  pursued  for  centuries  in  dealing 
with  any  nation,  any  race  of  men,  on  any  point  of  the  globe,  must  be 
qualified  by  any  enlightened  Statesman  as  high  treason  against 
humanity,  and  by  the  Christian  moralist  and  publicist  as  treason 
against  high  Heaven.  This  impolitic,  inhuman,  and  unchristian 
spirit,  marking,  even  before  the  Eeformation,  and  all  through  the 
Catholic  middle  ages,  the  misgovernment  of  Ireland  by  the  Norman 
masters  of  England,  naturally  excited  the  indignant  condemnation  of 
such  men  as  Sir  John  Davies,  Lord  Coke,  and  the  historian  Leland, 
himself  a  chaplain  to  the  Vice-Kegal  government.  We  have  yet  to 
quote  his  testimony,  that  of  an  eye-witness,  about  the  incredible 
barbarity  with  which  the  Catholic  Irish  were  treated  by  the  men, 
who,  if  we  were  to  believe  Froude,  had  exhausted  every  measure 
calculated  to  civilize  and  pacify  them. 

But  there  is  one  inevitable  result  of  this  cruel  persistence  in 
wrong-doing,  that  we  would  not  have  overlooked,  by  those  to  whose 
final  verdict  we  appeal  in  this  book. 

Not  only  were  "the  native  Irish "  systematically  excluded — and 
under  the  severest  penalties — from  all  participation  in  whatever  there 
was  of  an  elevating,  refining,  and  progressive  character  in  English 
institutions,  but  they  wei'e  shut  off  effectually, — so  far  as  English 
might  and  misrepresentation  could  effect  it, — not  only  from  the 
upward  social  movement  throughout  Christendom,  from  a  free  com- 

*  Sir  C.  G.  Duffy,  "  Young  Ireland." 


The  Irish  Shut  off  from  Intercourse  with  Europe.  83 

munication  with  Rome,  the  central  spiritual  authority, — but  from 
the  good  opinion  and  good  will  of  the  Roman  Pontiff  and  his  court, 
and  from  the  friendship  of  all  Christian  peoples.  The  same  system 
of  defamation  pursued  in  our  day  toward  the  Irish  }3eople  by  the 
organs  of  English  public  opinion,  has  been  practised  from  the  days 
of  the  Second  Henry  and  the  Third  Edward. 

And  they  upbraid  us  not  only  with  the  helpless  poverty,  which 
politico-economical  injustice  has  created,  working  through  centur- 
ies, but  with  the  ignorance,  the  rudeness,  the  downright  savagery 
which  their  oppression  and  misrule  tended  to  create  !  We  say 
"tended  to  create":  that  such  atrocious  policy  did  not  bear  its  law- 
ful fruits,  is  due,  not  to  our  tyrants,  but  to  the  magnificent  qualities 
of  the  Irish  nature,  and  to  the  providence  of  God. 

But  let  us  bestow  more  than  a  passing  word  on  that  famous — 
infamous  rather — legislation  of  Edward  III., — the  well-known  and 
oft-quoted  "Statutes  of  Kilkenny,"  passed  in  the  year  1366, — nearly 
two  hundred  years  after  the  arrival  of  Strongbow  and  his  adventurers. 

"In  the  Parliament  of  Kilkenny,  summoned  in  1366,  by  Lionel, 
Duke  of  Clarence,  son  of  Edward  III.,  it  was  enacted  that  marriage, 
nurture  of  infants,  and  gossipred  with  the  Irish,  should  be  considered 
and  punished  as  high  treason.  ...  It  was  also  made  highly  penal  to 
the  English  to  frequent  the  fairs  or  markets  of  the  Irish,  to  permit 
their  Irish  neighbors  to  graze  their  lands,  to  present  them  to  eccle- 
siastical benefices,  or  to  receive  tliem  into  monasteries  or  religious 
houses.  These  statutes  were  confirmed  in  a  parliament  held  at 
Drogheda,  under  Heniy  VII.,  in  1495."  * 

Our  American  Indian  Tribes,  North  and  South,  wherever  they 
were  left  to  the  disinterested  and  devoted  care  of  the  Catholic  Mis- 
sionaries, of  the  Jesuits  in  particular,  made  notable  progress  in  all 
that  constitutes  civilization, — the  refinement  of  life,  the  reformation 
of  morals,  and  the  creation  of  a  regular  government.  The  sole 
obstacle  to  their  becoming  stable  and  well-ordered  Christian  com- 

*  Count  Murphy,  "  Ireland  Industrial,"  &c.,  p.  2i3. 


84  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

inanities,  has  been  the  short-sighted  policy  of  the  secular  govern- 
ments, so  thwarting  the  beneficent  action  of  the  religious  guides, 
that  the  Aborigines  could  only  judge  that  either  the  latter  were 
actuated  in  their  labors  by  some  hidden  motives  of  selfish  ambition, 
or  that  their  superiors  in  the  Grovernment  disapproved  of  their 
methods  and  principles.  In  the  United  States,  since  we  set  aside,  in 
1869,  the  mediation  of  the  Jesuit  Missionaries,  and  delivered  up  the 
Rocky  Mountain  and  Pacific  Tribes  to  the  mercy  of  canting  hucksters 
and  traders  without  a  conscience,  we  have  been  at  war  with  the 
Indians  :  our  policy  is  now,  practically,  one  of  extermination. 

It  is  alike  reproved  by  humanity,  religion,  and  a  wise  economy. 
In  the  dealings  of  England  with  Ireland,  the  common  Faith  of  both 
nations,  and  the  close  and  friendly  intercourse  of  mutual  benefits 
between  the  two  Islands  for  upwards  of  six  hundred  years,  could  have 
been  a  strong  bond  of  friendship  even  after  the  Xorman  Conquest. 
But  all  religious  principles  and  pretences  were  set  aside,  and  war  to 
the  knife  was,  inaugurated,  when  peace  and  conciliation  might  have 
secured  such  glorious  results.  As  Sir  John  Davies  puts  it,  "Eoot  out 
the  Irish,"  and  plant  the  English  everywhere  in  Ireland,  became  the 
sole  maxim  of  the  Governors,  the  sole  rule  of  conduct  of  their  sub- 
ordinates. 

"What  then  was  there  in  the  institutions,  the  laws,  customs,  and 
morality  of  the  ancient  Celtic  race,  which  could  justify  such  a  policy  ? 
The  Normans  had  implanted  in  England  the  feudal  land  tenure  that 
prevailed  in  France:  they  resolved  to  establish  the  same  in  Ireland. 
Now  the  Brehon  Land-Law, — the  expression  of  the  national  life  from 
the  beginning, — declared  that  the  land  held  by  each  Sept,  Clan,  or 
Community  belonged  to  them  as  a  bod)^  not  to  the  chief.  The  death 
or  deposition,  or  exaltation  of  such  chief  to  a  higher  dignity,  left  the 
community  lands  in  their  integrity. 

This  system  of  land  tenure  was  an  eye-sore  to  the  Norman  Adven- 
turers, as  well  as  to  all  the  Knights  and  Gentlemen  who  came  after 
them,  doAvn  to  the  time  of  the  Tudors.  Modern  jurists  and  political 
economists  will  not  readily  agree  with  writers  of  the  school  of  Froude, 


Were  Native  Irish  Institutions  and  Customs  Barbarous?      8£ 

that  sucli  land  tenure  was  a  relic  of  barbarism,  or  that  '  the  people ' 
would  be  benefited  by  replacing  it  by  the  systems  long  in  use  in 
Ireland  and  England. 

Deeds  of  blood,  such  as  murder,  were  punishable,  according  to  the 
Brehon  Law,  not  by  taking  blood  for  blood  and  life  for  life,  but  by 
the  infliction  of  an  eric,  a  fine  or  blood-tax,  paid  by  the  murderer  and 
his  kins-folk.  The  solidarity  thus  established  in  each  family,  in  each 
neighborhood,  for  the  preservation  and  protection  of  life  and  limb, 
was,  illustrious  modern  jurists  say,  a  more  desirable  form  of  criminal 
jurisprudence,  than  decapitation,  or  garroting,  or  hanging,  or  perpet- 
ual imprisonment  with  hard  labor,  or  solitary  confinement. 

This  was  another  subject  of  reproach,  another  proof  that  the 
Irish  were  mere  barbarians.  English  legislators  who  hanged  a  man 
for  slaying  his  enemy,  or  the  destroyer  of  his  family  honor,  would 
only  impose  a  fine  on  the  man  who  had  dishonored  his  neighbor's 
wife,  destroyed  the  peace  of  his  home,  left  an  eternal  stain  upon  his 
children,  and  rendered  his  domestic  hearth  desolate  for  ever. 

Logists  in  the  19th  century  will  be  slow  in  giving,  on  those 
points,  a  preference  to  the  English  over  the  Brehon  Law. 

"But  there  were  barbarous  customs,  which  the  interests  of  civili- 
zation required  to  be  done  away  with,"  we  are  told. 

In  the  days  of  St.  Patrick,  there  were  national  yearly  festivals 
when  Princes  and  people  met  in  the  open  air,  and  celebrated  by 
poetry  and  song  and  banquet  the  glories  of  their  forefathers.  The 
pagan  accompaniments  of  these  festivities  had  been  superseded,  after 
the  conversion  of  the  nation,  by  appropriate  religious  rites,  which 
gave  a  consecration  to  patriotic  sentiment.  What  the  whole  nation 
did  in  common  on  these  solemn  occasions,  that  each  great  chief  did 
among  his  own  people  on  stated  anniversaries.  This  custom  was 
taken  up  and  held  in  honor  by  the  great  Anglo-Korman  families, 
who,  after  a  time,  identified  themselves  with  the  Celtic  race  around 
them.  Bards,  harpists,  Seannacliics  or  men  especially  learned  in  the 
local  and  national  traditions,  graced  the  chieftain's  board  on  these 
great  feasts.     The  Bard,  who  was,  not  unfrequently,  both  Poet  and 


86  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Musician,  sang  the  ancient  glories  of  the  Sept,  the  Clan,  or  the  ances- 
tors of  the  Chief;  and  the  SeaimacJiic  delighted  his  audience  by 
rehearsing  some  glorious  or  thrilling  tale  of  by-gone  times.  In 
the  pre-Norman  times,  when  hydromel — the  mixture  of  water  with 
honey — was  the  only  beverage  used  at  these  banquets,  there  was  no 
danger  of  intoxication.  Intoxication, — unless  we  are  very  sadly  mis- 
taken, was  but  little  known  among  the  Celtic  Irish  for  several  gener- 
ations thereafter.  But,  taking  these  touching  celebrations  as  Irish 
historians  describe  them,  they  remind  us  of  the  customs  of  the  civil- 
ized East,  when  Homer  sang  his  cantos  of  the  Iliad  to  the  assembled 
citizens  of  some  Grecian  Eepublic,  or  when  Pindarus  thrilled  with  his 
lyrics  the  representatives  of  all  Greece  in  the  Olympiac  meetings,  or 
when  Sophocles  and  ^schylus  and  Euripides  reenacted,  on  the  Pana- 
thenaic  stage,  the  heroic  achievements  of  the  godlike  men,  v/ho  had 
created  Grecian  civilization. 

On  their  little  island,  at  the  westernmost  extremity  of  Europe, 
with  the  untrg,veled,  mysterious  Ocean  extending  westward  and  north- 
ward beyond  them,  this  old  Celtic  people  clung  with  reverent  affec- 
tion to  these  inherited  customs,  which  recalled  the  time  when  the 
entire  human  family  held  their  anniversaries  on  the  sunny  plains  of 
Asia.  Christianity  could  do  so  mncli  toward  refining,  elevating,  hal- 
lowing these  national  customs,  which  kept  the  glorious  past  ever 
present,  while  laboring  to  prepare  a  still  more  glorious  future. 

All  these  festivities,  all  these  kindred  customs,  were,  in  the  eyes 
of  such  men  as  Giraldus  Cambrensis  and  the  historical  school  of  the 
present  day, — remnants  of  paganism,  to  be  done  away  with  in  com- 
mon with  everything  Irish,  as  savoring  of  paganism  and  savagery. 

"In  all  the  Parliament  rolls  which  are  extant  from  the  fortieth 
year  of  Edward  III.,  when  the  Statutes  of  Kilkenny  were  enacted, 
till  the  reign  of  King  Henry  VII.,  the  natives  are  styled  'the  Irish 
enemy,'  and  the  Anglo-Irish  '  English  rebels.'  "  Such  is  the  affirma- 
tion of  Sir  John  Davies.  Another  historian  adds  to  this:  "The  Irish 
had  always  been  considered  not  as  subjects  but  as  aliens,  and  even  as 
enemies  out  of  the  protection  of  the  law;  in  consequence  whereof  all 


''The  Parish-Schools  Act:'  87 

marriages  and  alliances  and  even  commerce  with  them  were  prohib- 
ited; and  they  might  be  oppressed,  spoiled,  and  killed  by  the  English 
at  pleasure,  not  being  allowed  to  bring  any  action  nor  any  inquisition 
lying  for  the  murder  of  an  Irishman:''  * 

We  resume. 

It  is, — we  repeat  it, — a  matter  of  history  that  the  whole  aim  and 
effort  of  the  Anglo-Norman  Government  in  Ireland,  from  1169  to 
1530,  were  directed  toward  the  subjugation,  the  extermination  rather, 
of  the  Irish  race,  and  the  extinction  of  everything  distinctively  Irish 
or  Celtic, — institutions,  laws,  customs,  language,  and  literature.  No 
candid-minded  man  who  takes  up  the  authentic  records  of  Irish  his- 
tory, the  official  acts  of  the  Government,  the  calmest,  most  impartial, 
and  most  enlightened  writers  of  both  nations,  but  must  come  to  this 
conclusion. 

The  Parliament  which  confirmed,  in  1496,  the  Statutes  of  Kil- 
keimy,  and  revived  the  old  and  somewhat  dormant  spirit  of  race- 
antagonism  and  persecution,  showed  that  England  had  learned  no 
wisdom  from  the  utter  failure  of  centuries  of  proscription.  The 
Churchmen  who  sat  in  the  English  House  of  Lords,  and  gave  their 
vote  in  continuance  and  confirmation  of  these  odious  and  unchristian 
laws,  had,  seemingly,  no  sense  of  that  high  Christian  charity  which 
sees  only  brothers  in  all  nations  and  races.  And  Henry  VII., — the 
English  Solomon,  did  not  veto  these  disgraceful  enactments,  this  fatal 
and  ferocious  policy,  which  would  rather  unpeople  a  country,  than 
admit  to  the  protection  of  English  law  and  Justice  a  neighboring 
people,  because  they  differed  from  the  Norman  masters  of  England 
in  blood,  language,  and  manners. 

In  1537,  Henry  VIII.  had  a  law  passed  by  Parliament,  ordaining 
that  an  elementary  school  should  be  established  in  every  parish  in 
England.     In  the  same  year,  and  by  the  same  Parliament,  a  similar 


*  Carte's  "  Life  of  Ormonde,"  vol.  i.,  p.  13.  These  two  quotations  are  from 
Count  Murphy's  admirable  book  on  Ireland.  James  I.,  in  the  beginning  of  his 
reign,  repealed  most  of  these  odious  enactments.  He  did  not  long  act  consistently 
with  such  beginnings.     His  good  intentions  remained  without  effect  in  Ireland. 


88  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

law  was  enacted  for  Ireland:  this  is  known  as  "the  Parish-Schools 
Act." 

This  act  stipulated  that  every  candidate  for  holy  orders  should 
have  an  oath  administered  to  him  (by  the  archbishop  or  other  prelate 
conferring  them),  obliging  him  to  endeavor  to  learn  the  English  lan- 
guage, and  "move  endoctrine,  and  teacli  all  other  being  under  his 
order,  rule,  and  governance,  to  accomplish  and  perform  the  same," 
and  "bid  the  beades  in  the  English  tongue,  and  preach  the  word  of 
God  in  English,  if  he  can  preach;"  and  also  would  keep  or  cause  to 
be  kept  within  his  parish,  "a  school  for  to  learn  English,  if  any  chil- 
dren of  his  parish  come  to  him  for  to  learn  the  same,  taking  for  the 
keeping  of  the  said  school,  such  convenient  stipend  or  salary,  as  in 
the  said  land  is  accustomably  used  to  be  taken."* 

*  28  Henry  VIII.,  ch.  xv.    Irish  Statutes,  vol.  i.,  p.  125. 


PART  SECOND. 


THE  HISTORICAL  LAND-QUESTION  IN  IRELAND. 


By  what  Right  Ieelaitd  was  Ikvaded,  and  her  Lands 
TAKEN  Possession  of. 

^T^HE  fact  which  first  led  to  the  invasion  of  Ireland  by  Norman 
noblemen  and  Knights^,  vassals  of  Henry  II.,  King  of  England, 
and  Duke  of  Normandy,  is  familiar  to  every  school-boy.  Dermod 
Mac  Murrongh,  king  or  overlord  of  Leinster,  had  abducted  the  wife 
of  O'Rourke  of  Breffny,  a  powerful  chieftain  of  Connaught.  It  so 
happened  that  Roderick  O'Connor,  King  of  Connaught,  was,  in  1169, 
Monarch  of  all  Ireland,  and  as  such  demanded  satisfaction  of  the 
King  of  Leinster  for  the  wrong  done  to  O'Rourke.  This  reparation 
Mac  Murrough  refused  to  give.  The  latter,  some  of  whose  doings 
we  glanced  at  in  the  preceding  chapter,  was  unscrupulous,  un- 
principled, and  cruel.  His  crimes  had  alienated  from  him  the 
affections  of  his  own  Leinstermen,  and  driven  into  rebellion  the 
Danish  colony  of  Dublin.  Obliged  to  fly  from  his  own  estates,  he 
crossed  over  to  England  in  1168  in  order  obtain  help  from  a  foreign 
nation  against  his  own  suzerain  and  subjects.  From  England  he 
passed  into  France,  sought  Henry  II.,  then  in  Aquitaine,  and  from 
him  got  permission  to  enlist  in  his  cause  such  of  the  Norman  Knights 
and  Nobles,  as  would  like  to  better  their  fortunes  in  Ireland. 
With   this  permission    Mac   Murrough  hastened  back  to   England, 

(89) 


90  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

found  in'  Eobert  de  Clare,  Earl  of  Pembroke,  an  impoverished 
Norman  noble,  who  hungered  for  land  and  wealth.  De  Clare, 
better  known  by  his  nickname  of  Strongbow,  soon  rallied  round 
himself  and  Mac  Murrough  a  band  .of  Norman-Welsh  knights  as 
needy  and  land-hungry  as  himself,  who  eagerly  embraced  Mac 
Murrough's  offers  of  broad  lands  and  lordly  power  in  Ireland.  The 
principal  of  these  were  Maurice  Fitz  Gerald,  Eobert  Fitz  Stephen, 
Kaymond  le  Gros,  and  Hervey  Mountmorres. 

Wexford  was  the  first  place  to  fall  into  the  power  of  Fitz  Stephen 
and  Mountmorres,  who  led  the  invaders'  vanguard,  and  who  gave  the 
native  Irish  a  taste  of  what  they  had  to  expect  from  the  new  civil- 
izers,  by  making  an  expedition  into  the  adjoining  country,  wasting, 
destroying,  slaughtering  indiscriminately.  AVhat  had  the  peaceful 
inhabitants  done  to  deserve  such  inhumanity  ?  .  .  .  . 

And  so  began  Anglo-Norman  rule  in  Ireland. 

Eaymond  le  Gros  was  not  far  behind  these  first  destroyers.  He 
landed  at  Waterford,  committed  great  havoc  among  the  half-armed 
peasants  who  dared  to  oppose  himself  and  his  mail-clad  followers; 
seized  seventy  of  the  principal  citizens  of  Waterford,  had  their  arms 
and  leo-s  broken  in  presence  of  the  terrified  multitude,  and  then 
hurled  from  the  summit  of  the  neighboring  cliffs  into  the  sea.  The 
town  was  next  stormed  and  sacked,  and  reduced,  for  the  most  part, 
to  a  smoking  ruin. 

Amid  these  ruins,  with  the  corpses  of  the  slain  still  imburied 
around  him,  Dermod  ]\Iac  Murrough  caused  the  nuptials  of  his 
daughter  Eva  to  be  celebrated  with  Strongbow.  To  his  son-in-law 
he  gave,  as  a  dower  with  the  hand  of  his  daughter,  the  Kingdom  of 
Leinster.  To  Strongbow's  principal  followers  princely  territories 
were  assigned. 

Eoderick  O'Connor,  meanwhile,  and  the  other  Irish  Princes  made 
no  effectual  or  concerted  effort  to  repel  this  handful  of  lawless 
adventurers,  to  whose  success,  indeed,  the  partisans  of  Mac  Mur- 
rough, and  the  intelligence  which  the  latter  maintained  in  Dublin, 
and  the  other  fortified  towns,  contributed  greatly.     For  Dublin  fell 


Landing  of  Henry  II.  91 

into  their  power  after  Wexford  and  Waterford;  the  knights,  men-at- 
arms,  and  archers,  inured  to  warfare,  and  acting  under  perfect  disci- 
pHne,  swept  through  the  fairest  and  most  populous  districts  of 
Meath  and  Connaught,  marking  their  way  with  fire  and  blood. 

King  Dermod  glutted  his  revenge  to  the  full.  His  enemies  fell 
or  fled  before  the  Norman  steel.  But  he  did  not  live  long  to  enjoy 
his  unnatural  triumph  over  his  countrymen.     He  died  in  1170. 

That  same  year  Strongbow  returned  to  England  to  offer  to  his 
liege-lord,  Henry,  the  Kingdom  of  Leinster  which  he  had  already 
won,  the  positions  held  by  his  followers,  and  the  whole  of  Ireland, 
which  he  looked  upon  as  good  as  won. 

In  1172  Henry,  at  the  head  of  a  fleet  of  240  sail,  bearing  400 
knights  and  4,000  men-at-arms,  landed  himself  in  Ireland.  In  the 
interval,  and  after  the  death  of  Dermod  Mac  Murrough,  the  Irish 
Sovereign  and  his  confederates  had  taken  heart  and  counsel  together. 
The  subordinate  chiefs  and  their  followers  threw  themselves  on  the 
Normans  everywhere,  and  drove  them  behind  the  walls  of  the  towns. 
Dublin  was  besieged  in  vain.  The  Irish  were  entirely  unequal  to  a 
contest  with  the  well-armed  and  disciplined  bands  of  the  invaders. 
They  were  driven  back  in  disorder  from  Dublin. 

What  chance  had  they  now  to  resist  Henry's  formidable  and  well- 
appointed  army?  Eoderick  O'Connor  withdrew  with  his  forces 
behind  the  Shannon,  and  the  English  King  marched  through 
Munster  like  a  conqueror  who  had  subdued  every  foe.  There  was  a 
feud  between  The  O'Neill  and  Eoderick  O'Connor,  which  neither 
was  magnanimous  enough  to  forget  in  presence  of  the  common 
enemy  of  their  country.  So,  the  minor  princes  submitted  or  seemed 
to  submit  to  Henry,  as  he  continued  his  unopposed  progress  from  the 
sea-coast  to  Cashel,  and  from  Cashel  to  Dublin, 

In  this  city  he  spent  the  Christmas  holidays,  holding  a  splendid 
court,  and  surprising  the  native  chiefs  by  a  magnificence  and  a  cere- 
monial which  were  intended  to  dazzle  and  overawe.  Much  time  was 
spent  in  getting  Strongbow,  who  now  assumed  the  right  to  the  King- 
dom of  Leinster,  and  all  his  subordinate  chieftains,  to  go  through  the 


93  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

form  of  surrendering  their  lands  to  the  King,  and  in  receiving  them 
back  from  him  as  fiefs.  It  was  a  form  the  Irish  princes  could  not 
understand. 

One  man  was  there,  the  saintly  Archbishop  of  Dublin,  who  had  a 
clear  and  full  knowledge  of  the  revolution  which  was  taking  place  in 
his  country,  and  who  foresaw  and  foretold  its  consequences.  St. 
Lawrence  O'Toole  had  vainly  endeavored  to  unite  against  the 
invaders  the  Kings  of  Connaught  and  Ulster,  all  the  available  forces 
of  his  native  land.  To  encourage  Roderick  O'Connor,  to  stimulate 
the  patriotism  of  Princes  and  Prelates,  he  had  himself  taken  the  field 
against  the  men  who  came  to  Ireland  only  to  enslave  and  to  destroy, 
whose  deeds  of  blood  had  filled  the  land  with  horror,  and  whose  path, 
as  they  ravaged  the  country  far  and  wide,  was  marked  by  the  smok- 
ing ruins  of  churches  and  monasteries,  by  the  corpses  of  the  peaceful 
and  unoffending  populations  massacred  on  their  own  hearthstone. 
The  Christian  Normans  were  more  pitiless,  more  impious  than  the 
Pagan  Ostmen  of  old. 

Henry  divided  among  the  chief  adventurers  the  fairest  portions  of 
the  Island,  acting  as  if  it  were  his  by  right,  and  enjoining  on  them  to 
win  and  hold  it  for  him  by  the  sword.  He  organized  in  Dublin  all 
the  branches  of  a  regular  government,  appointed  De  Lacy  and 
Strongbow  Lords  Justices,  De  Lacy,  to  whom  the  Kingdom  of 
Meath  was  given,  and  Strongbow,  who  held  the  inheritance  of 
Dermod  Mac  Murrough.  Later,  in  1775,  Kaymond  le  Gros,  the 
butcher  of  Waterford,  was  made  the  first  Lord  Deputy.  The  cap- 
tains of  the  robber-band  were  thus  charged,  by  this  Christian  King, 
with  the  duties  of  the  executive  government  and  the  administration 
of  justice  in  the  land,  which  was  still  red  with  the  innocent  blood 
they  had  shed,  and  whose  inhabitants  it  must  be  their  policy  not  to 
rule  or  to  pacify,  but  to  exterminate. 

The  King  organized  also  in  Dublin,  which  he  intended  should  be 
the  residence  of  a  vice-regal  court,  an  official  hierarchy  exactly  resem- 
bling that  of  Windsor,  marshal,  justiciary,  constable,  seneschal, 
chamberlain,    butler,    standard-bearer,    &c.      English    law  was    to 


The  Question  of  Right.  93 

supersede  Brelion  law  in  the  districts  conquered  from  tlie  Irish,  and 
which  he  divided  into  three  counties,  with  their  Sheriffs,  and  other 
officers.  The  Judiciary  was  also  constituted  on  the  English  model. 
Dublin  had  its  Courts  of  the  King's  Bench,  Common  Pleas,  and 
Exchequer;  and  the  Judges  were  to  go  their  regular  circuits  and  the 
King's  Writ  to  run  freely  as  in  England.  A  Council  of  State  or  Privy 
Council  was  also  established,  with  a  Lord  High  Chancellor,  and  Lord 
Treasurer.  The  city  of  Dublin,  which  had  been  built  by  the  Danes, 
and  had  till  then  been  a  Danish  colony,  tributary  to  the  Kings  of 
Leinster,  was  now  incorporated  and  handed  over  to  the  citizens  of 
Bristol  to  colonize  and  care  for.  To  such  of  the  clergy  as  accepted 
his  authority,  Henry  offered  the  privileges  enjoyed  by  ecclesiastical 
persons  and  property  in  England,  exempting  them  from  the  burthens 
and  penalties  to  which  all  lands  and  persons  were  subject  under  the 
Brehon  Law.  He  produced,  it  is  said,  the  Bull  of  Pope  Adrian, 
bestowing  on  him  the  lordship  of  Ireland.  But  the  latest  and  ripest 
scholarship  *  has  discovered,  in  what  must  be  accounted  the  genuine 
letter  of  Pope  Adrian,  instead  of  an  absolute  gift  of  the  Island,  a  pos- 
itive injunction  laid  on  Henry  in  his  projected  expedition  to  Ireland, 
that  "  he  should  attempt  nothing  of  the  kind  without  the  advice  and 
consent  of  the  Princes,  Bishops,  and  people  of  Ireland." 

Henry  having  thus  regulated  all  things  to  his  own  satisfaction  in 
what  he  considered  as  his  new  dominions,  returned  to  England  to 
answer  before  the  Pope's  legates  for  the  murder  of  St.  Thomas  a 
Becket. 

On  such  grounds  rests  English  domination  in  Ireland.  Let  us 
look  into  them  a  little  more  closely. 

JSTow  as  to  the  question  of  right:  "The  feudal  system,"  says  Mr. 
Walpole,  "could  not  be  applied  to  Ireland,  where  the  tribal  system 
prevailed,  without  revolutionizing  the  whole  structure  of  society;  and 
its  application  was  in  the  eyes  of  the  Irish  nothing  but  a  high  handed 
invasion  of  the  rights  of  property,  and  an  act  of  shameful  injustice. 

*  See  number  185  of  Analecta  Juris  Pontificii,  18S2. 


94  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

"  We  find" — he  continues — "  the  thin  end  of  the  wedge  introduced 
by  Dermot  (Mac  Morrough)  surrendering  to  Henry  and  his  heirs  a 
kingdom  of  which  he  was  only  tlie  elected  monarch;  to  which  no 
ruler,  according  to  tlie  law  of  the  land,  could  have  any  rightful  claim 
but  through  the  free  suffrages  of  the  tribal  chiefs.  We  find  him 
again  making  grants  of  territory  to  Strongbow,  Fitz  Stephen,  and 
others,  over  which  he  had  not  the  shadow  of  a  right:  kinds  which 
belonged  to  various  native  Septs,  whose  chosen  overlord  he  was,  but 
over  whose  lands  he  had  no  right  of  control.  The  lands  thus  illegally 
granted  were  occupied  by  the  Norman  adventurers,  who  held  them 
by  force,  the  tribes  who  dwelt  thereon  either  being  expropriated  or 
reduced  to  the  position  of  tenants. 

"Again,  Henry  based  his  title  to  be  lord  paramount  over  the 
island  on  the  papal  bull,  which  was,  obviously,  no  title  at  all;  and  he 
affected  to  treat  those  who  opposed  him  as  rebels,  and  claimed  to 
escheat  their  lands  by  branding  them  with  treason,  and  to  re-enjoy 
that  which  he  never  possessed,  and  to  which  he  could  have  no  claim. 

"The  Normans  had,  as  yet  (1189),  made  but  slight  lodgments  on 
the  coasts;  but  the  tim.e  was  coming  when  this  fiction  of  feudal  ten- 
ure was  to  be  forced  gradually  upon  the  whole  island,  and  to  be  con- 
verted into  an  engine  for  the  transfer  of  the  soil  from  the  native  Celt 
to  the  colonizing  Norman.  Every  effort  of  the  people  to  assert  its 
independence  was  to  be  punishable  as  treasonable  offence,  entailing 
the  resulting  penalty  of  a  forfeiture  of  the  land.  When  the  owners 
were  dispossessed,  they  might  be  permitted  to  occupy  as  tenants  at 
will,  to  support  themselves  by  tilling  the  ground,  and  to  pay  for  the 
privilege  in  rent  to  the  new  landowner.  What  was  begun  in  1170 
was  continued  in  after  generations,  until  the  whole  island  came  into 
the  possession  either  of  English  immigrants,  or  those  natives  who 
accepted  the  new  order  of  things,  and  received  again  the  lands  as 
grants  from  the  English  crown. 

"It  should  be  remembered  also  that  the  invasion  of  Ireland  in  the 
twelfth  century  was  not  an  invasion  by  England,  but  by  the  Normans 
of  the  continent.     Henry  was  Duke  of  Normandy  and  Count  of 


EstaUishnient  of  Castle  Rule,  95 

Anjon,  and  he  also  happened  to  be  King  of  England.  His  ancestors 
had  reduced  England  to  a  dependency  of  the  Norman  duchy,  and  in 
like  manner  the  Normans  of  his  day  proceeded  to  spread  through 
England  over  to  Ireland.  England  had  been  occupied  by  the  penni- 
less riffraff  of  Normandy;  after  a  hundred  years'  occupation  of  Eng- 
land, the  Norman  adventurers  of  that  day  swarmed  upon  the  coasts 
of  Ireland,  in  order  to  win  a  Kingdom  after  the  manner  of  their  fore- 
fathers. It  was  a  fresh  invasion  of  Northmen  by  a  circuitous  route 
through  Normandy  and  Britain. 

"Henry  had  accomplished  his  primary  object,  that  of  securing  his 
authority  over  the  colonists.  He  left  it  to  them  to  maintain  them- 
selves, and  to  extend  their  borders  as  best  they  could,  relying  on  the 
incentives  of  self-preservation  and  rapacity."  * 

Henry  II.,  then,  before  returning  to  England,  organized  in 
Dublin  a  Vice-royal  government,  with  Courts  of  Law  as  in  London. 
Thus  was  established  that  system  of  rapine  and  oppression,  miscalled 
the  Irish  government,  which  has  ever  since  cursed  the  land  with  its 
presence  and  its  acts.  Then  appeared  the  first  Lords  Justices  and 
the  hateful  Irish  Judiciary,  which  dealing  out  iniquity  from  the 
Bench,  instead  of  administering  justice  with  a  firm  and  impartial 
hand,  has  made  the  Irish  soul  sick  of  the  very  name  of  law,  and 
skeptical  about  the  very  existence  of  justice  in  Ireland. 

Then  began  the  rule  of  Dublin  Castle,  with  that  abominable 
Officialism,  the  very  odious  nature  of  which  Englishmen  are  begin- 
ning at  length  to  understand,  but  which  they  must  appreciate  thor- 
oughly, if  they  would  inaugurate  the  reign  of  Justice  in  Ireland  by 
removing  it  once  and  for  ever. 

Once  and  for  all  let  us  have  unimpeachable  testimony  as  to  the 
existence  and  nature  of  this  Officialism,  which  we  have  designated  as 
organized  Rapine,  Oppression,  and  Injustice,  under  the  sacred  name 
of  Government, — of  government  for  a  Christian  people,  whom  the 
English  had  come  over  to  civilize  and  elevate. 

*  "  Hist,  of  the  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  pp.  39-41. 


96  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

"A  set  of  needy  and  rapacious  adventurers  passing  over  from 
Britain,  in  a  constant  succession,  made  no  scruple  of  enriching 
themselves  by  the  most  unjustifiable  methods.  There  was  not  a 
native  who  could  be  secure  from  their  rapacity."  * 

Here  is  the  testimony  of  another  writer,  still  living,  and  whose 
work  on  Ireland  has  won  the  praise  of  the  most  bitter  opponents  of 
Irish  claims  : 

"Never  was  a  country  afflicted  for  centuries  by  a  more  unjust  and 
more  feeble  administration.  Never  was  a  country  more  in  need  of  a 
just  and  firm  government.  Unfortunately,  one  after  another  the 
sovereigns  of  England,  preoccupied  by  foreign  wars  and  domestic 
broils,  were  obliged  to  leave  Ireland  almost  entirely  in  the  hands  of 
their  Lords  Deputies.  Even  these  latter,  as  a  rule,  spent  the  gi'eater 
part  of  their  time  in  England;  the  government  in  their  absence  being 
carried  on  by  two  or  more  Lords  Justices.  Of  the  Lords  Deputies  and 
Lords  Justices,  especially  the  latter,  the  private  interests  lay  directly  in 
the  opposite  direction  to  their  public  duty.  Their  policy,  accordingly, 
was  shaped  altogether  to  suit  their  own  private  ends  and  not  to  pro- 
mote the  welfare  of  the  country  they  governed.  This  went  on  for 
centuries.  The  monarchs  saw  it;  but,  generally  speaking,  were 
unable  to  prevent  it.  It  is  one  of  the  many  strange  anomalies  of  the 
histoiy  of  Ireland."  f 

Hear  another  writer,  a  chaplain  to  the  Vice-Regal  Government  in 
Dublin  : 

"At  a  distance  from  the  supreme  seat  of  power,  and  with  the 
advantage  of  being  able  to  make  such  representations  of  the  state  of 
Ireland  as  they  pleased,  the  English  Vicegerents  acted  with  the  less 
reserve.  They  were  generally  tempted  to  undertake  the  conduct  of 
a  disordered  State,  for  the  sake  of  private  emolument,  and  their 
object  was  pursued  without  delicacy  or  integrity,  sometimes  with 
inhuman  violence."  X 

*  Crawford,  "  History  of  Ireland,"  vol.  i.,  p.  177. 

+  Count  John  Nicholas  Murphy,  "  Ireland  Industrial,"  &c.,  p.  242 

X  Leland,  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  12. 


The  two  first  Lords  Justices.  97 

Such  Avas  the  System  whicli  Leland  knew  well  in  his  own  day, 
and  in  the  preceding  six  centuries.  Here  is  how  he  describes,  in 
another  passage,  the  working  of  this  system: 

"The  oppression  exercised  with  impunity  in  every  particular  dis- 
trict; the  depredations  everywliere  committed  among  the  inferior 
orders  of  the  people,  not  by  open  enemies  alone,  but  by  those  who 
called  themselves  friends  and  protectors,  and  who  justified  their  out- 
rages by  the  plea  of  lawful  authority;  their  avarice  and  cruelty,  their 
plundering  and  massacres  were  still  more  ruinous  than  the  defeat  of 
an  arm}^,  or  the  loss  of  a  city.  The  wretched  suiferers  had  neither 
power  to  repel,  nor  law  to  restrain  or  vindicate  their  injuries.  In 
times  of  general  commotion,  laws  the  most  wisely  framed  and  most 
equitably  administered,  are  but  of  little  moment.  But  now  the  very 
source  of  public  justice  was  corrupted  and  poisoned."  * 

English  scholars  of  impartial  mind,  inquiring  into  the  causes  of 
the  irreconcilable  liatred  borne  toward  England  and  English  rule  in 
Ireland  by  the  natives  of  the  latter  couiitry,  and  Protestant  Clergy- 
men even  who  read  the  facts  of  Irish  history  with  tbe  sincere  desire 
of  knowing  the  truth,  have  alike  arrived  at  the  same  conclusion. 

"The  true  cause  which  for  a  long  time  fatally  opposed  the  gradual 
coalition  of  the  Irish  and  English  race,  imder  one  form  of  govern- 
ment, was,  that  the  great  English  settlers  found  it  more  for  their 
immediate  interest,  that  a  free  course  should  be  left  to  their  oppres- 
sions; that  many  of  those,  whose  lands  they  coveted,  should  be  con- 
sidered as  aliens;  that  they  should  be  furnished  for  their  petty  wars 
by  arbitrary  exactions;  and  in  their  rapines  and  massacres  be  freed 
from  the  terrors  of  a  rigidly  impartial  and  severe  tribunal."  f 

To  illustrate  the  perfect  truth  of  what  is  here  asserted  Avith  a 
'moderation'  easily  accounted  for  in  the  writer,  we  have  only  to 
remember  the  names  of  the  two  men  whom  Henry  II.  left  to  govern 
in  his  stead,  under  the  title  of  Lords  Justices,  the  Kingdom  of  Ireland, 
or  as  much  of  it  as  they  could  control.     These  were  Hugh  de  Lacy, 

*  Leland,  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  i.  328.  +  Ibidem,  i.  267. 


98  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Earl  of  Meatli,  and  Eichard  de  Clare,  Earl  of  Pembroke  (Strongbow). 
That  is  to  say,  he  left  behind  him  to  rule  with  justice  and  humanity, 
a  people  whose  blood  these  adventurers  had  ruthlessly  shed  without 
cause,  and  wliose  lands  they  had  taken,  and  more  of  whose  lands  they 
were  given  to  take  and  hold  with  the  sword.  From  tliat  day  forth 
the  English  Interest,  governing  from  Dublin  Castle,  was  to  obtain  by 
all  means  available  the  lands  of  the  Irish  people,  and  to  treat  as  ene- 
mies the  people  whose  lands  they  wanted.  That  English  Interest  was 
thenceforward  upheld  by  every  needy  adventurer  who  hungered  for 
land,  and  whose  conscience  accepted  as  lawful  all  means  of  get- 
ting it. 

Thus  begins  the  long  series  of  Lords  Deputies  and  Lords  Justices, 
perpetuating  the  land-hunger,  and  the  gigantic  system  of  wrong  and 
rapine  which  is  still  bearing  such  deadly  fruits  for  both  countries. 

"By  the  new  adventurers,"  says  Leland,  describing  how  the  sys- 
tem worked  at  a  later  period,  "employed  in  the  service  of  the  Crown, 
both  (the  old  Anglo-Irish  and  the  Celtic  Irish)  were  regarded  indis- 
criminately as  one  people  equally  disaffected,  and  dangerous  to  the 
Englisli  interest.  These  men  who  had  raised  large  fortunes  in  Ire- 
land and  frequently  upon  the  ruin  of  the  old  nativeg,  affected  to  be 
considered  as  the  only  loyal  subjects  of  the  realm;  and  artfully  con- 
trived that  even  the  most  respectable  of  the  old  English  families 
should  be  regarded  by  the  Crown  with  suspicion,  and  excluded  from 
every  office  of  trust  and  honor."  * 

As  generation  succeeded  generation  after  1173,  the  Norman  and 
English  adventurers  with  their  families  became  to  a  very  great  extent 
identified  with  the  Celtic  population  around  them.  Having  obtained 
the  object  for  which  they  had  left  IS'ormandy  or  England,  they  were 
content  to  enjoy  what  they  had,  and  to  live  in  peace  with  their  Irish 
neighbors.  As  the  Lords  Deputies  and  Lords  Justices,  who  had 
recently  arrived  from  England,  and  the  swarm  of  land-hungry  adven- 
turers who  were  always  hanging  about  Dublin  Castle  or  filling  the 

*  Leland,  iii.  101. 


The  ''English  Rebels,'''  and  the  ''Irish  Enemy.'"  99 

government  offices, — were  still  under  the  influence  of  the  Land-Hun- 
ger,  they  did  not  want  the  old  settlers  to  thwart  their  schemes. 
They  kept  them  out  of  office. 

So  a  bitter  feud  arose  between  the  old  English  colonists  and  the 
Government  in  Dublin  Castle,  with  its  Privy  Council,  and  the  army 
of  needy  adventurers, — men  of  good  birth  most  of  them  and  of 
broken  fortunes,  wlio  came  over  recommended  for  patronage,  and 
with  the  belief  that  Ireland  and  the  Irish  were  only  made  to  be  the 
prey  of  their  English  masters. 

The  former,  born  in  Ireland,  and  brought  up  among  its  Celtic 
population,  had  adopted  the  manners,  the  dress,  and  even  the  very 
language  of  a  race,  who,  if  less  warlike  or  far  less  efficiently  equipped 
for  war  than  themselves,  were  their  superiors  in  all  that  constituted 
true  civilization.  Without  ever  becoming  identified  with  their  Celtic 
neighbors  in  political  interests  or  national  aspirations,  the  Anglo- 
Norman  colonists  were  perfectly  satisfied  with  their  lot  in  Ireland. 
The  great  nobles  lived  like  independent  princes.  They  had  usurped 
the  place  of  the  ancient  native  chieftains,  and  had  won,  in  many 
instances,  the  devoted  adherence  of  the  members  of  the  Septs.  They 
ruled  their  possessions  in  accordance  with  the  Brehon  Law,  and 
cared  but  little  for  the  King's  Writ,  his  Sheriffs,  or  his  Judges,  defy- 
ing, amidst  the  fastnesses  of  a  thickly  wooded  country,  the  authority 
even  of  the  Lord  Deputy,  or  the  Lords  Justices. 

Thus  it  happened  that  the  Castle  Officials,  and  the  hungry  crowd 
who  ever  hung  about  the  Castle  precincts,  as  well  as  the  London 
Privy  Council,  came  to  look  upon  these  descendants  of  the  De  Lacys, 
De  Clares,  and  Fitz  Geralds  as  little  better  than  rebels  :  thus,  indeed, 
arose  the  denomination  of  "English  Rebels"  by  which  they  soon 
came  to  be  distinguished, — the  name  of  the  "Irish  Enemies"  being 
reserved  to  the  ISTative  Celts,  against  whom  both  the  new  and  the  old 
English  Interests  combined  when  it  suited  them. 

It  was  quite  a  convenient  policy  both  for  the  Dublin  Officials  and 
the  King's  Government  in  London,  to  place  the  Old  English  in 
Ireland   on   a   footing   of  permanent   rebellion, — to  have,   at  least. 


100  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

public  opinion  regard  them  as  such,  in  order,  when  the  land-hunger 
around  the  Castle  became  irresistible,  some  pretext  could  be  devised, 
some  fair  occasion  found,  for  seizing  and  confiscating  all,  or  a  portion 
of  their  estates. 

It  became  a  necessary  policy  for  the  Lord  Deputies  and  Lords 
Justices  to  break  down  and  weaken,  if  they  could  not  destroj^  the  great 
Anglo-Irish  lords,  who  were  one  of  the  chief  obstacles  to  a  new  divis- 
ion of  the  spoils.  We  have  a  sti'iking  instance  of  this  in  the  reign 
of  Edward  III.  Edward  was  sadly  in  want  of  money  for  his  con- 
tinental wars,  and  was  quite  earnest  in  his  endeavors  to  obtain  sup- 
plies from  his  Irish  Parliament.  But  the  lords  spiritual  and  tem- 
poral, who  were  continually  harassed  by  the  Castle  Government, 
were  unwilling  to  grant  money  till  they  had  obtained  redress  for  their 
own  grievances.  The  most  powerful  among  the  Anglo-Irish  barons, 
the  Earl  of  Desmond,  had,  on  one  occasion  (1331),  been  arrested  and 
imprisoned  by  the  Lord  Lieutenant,  Sir  Anthony  Lucy,  who  without 
any  process  of  law,  or  formal  proof  of  guilt,  kept  the  young  noble- 
man in  strict  confinement  for  eighteen  months,  and  confiscated  a 
large  portion  of  his  estates.  This  high-handed  act  of  tyranny  pleased 
the  king,  whose  need  was  great,  and  who  furthermore  announced  his 
purpose  to  take  back  all  the  grants  of  land  made  to  the  Irish 
proprietors,  under  pretext  that  these  had  not  paid  their  dues  to  the 
crown.  A  Parliament  was  summoned  to  meet  in  Dublin,  thereupon, 
and  the  lords  were  served,  in  due  course,  with  the  Avrit  requiring 
their  attendance.  But  they,  at  the  instigation  of  the  Earl  of 
Desmond,  refused  to  answer  the  summons,  meeting,  instead,  at 
Callan,  in  Kilkenny,  and  drawing  up  a  Remonstrance  to  the  King. 

"Chiefly,  and  with  particular  warmth  and  earnestness,  they  rep- 
resented to  the  King,"  says  Leland,  "that  his  English  subjects  of 
Ireland  had  been  traduced  and  misrepresented  to  the  throne,  by 
those  who  had  been  sent  from  England  to  govern  them;  men  who 
came  into  the  Kingdom  without  a  knowledge  of  its  state,  circum- 
stances, or  interest;  whose  sole  object  was  to  repair  their  shattered 
fortunes;  too  poor  to  support  their  state,  much  less  to  indulge  their 


Officialism  like  the  Car  of  Juggernaut.  101 

passions,  until  they  had  filled  their,  coffers  by  extortion,  to  the  great 
detriment  and  affliction  of  the  people;  that,  notwithstanding  such 
misrepresentations,  the  English  subjects  of  Ireland  had  ever  adhered 
in  loyalty  and  aljegiance  to  the  Crown  of  England,  had  maintained 
the  land  for  the  King  and  his  progenitors,  served  frequently  both 
against  the  Irish  and  their  foreign  enemies,  and  mostly  at  their  own 
charges."  * 

Here  comes  in  the  Car  of  Juggernaut,  directed  this  time  by  the 
Lord  Deputy,  Sir  Ralph  Ufford.  So  long  as  this  terrible  engine  of 
oppression  only  moved  into  the  Celtic  districts  it  might  crush  with 
perfect  impunity  its  thousands  of  victims  without  arousing,  seem- 
ing!}-,  remonstration,  indignation,  or  any  sentiment  of  horror.  But 
when  the  rolling  of  its  wheels  were  heard  on  the  lands  of  the  Fitz 
Geralds  or  the  De  Burgos,  or  the  De  Lacys,  and  a  single  fair  English 
limb  was  mangled  or  maimed  by  it,  the  'prelates,  earls,  barons, 
and  community  of  Ireland,' — that  is  the  whole  Pale,  lifted  up  their 
voice  and  called  for  vengeance  or  redress. 

Sir  Ralph  Ufford, — as  Holiinshed  informs  us,  "was  verie  rigorous, 
and  through  persuasion  (it  is  said)  of  his  Avife,  was  more  extreame 
and  covetous  than  otherwise  he  would  have  beene."  This  "singular 
good  justicer,"  as  Davies  calls  him,  had  "extreame"  land-hunger; 
and  there  was  a  host  of  the  land-hungry  behind  him,  who  propelled 
the  Car  of  Juggernaut  into  Desmond,  the  King's  standard  waving  in 
front.  In  134-A,  he  "seized  Desmond's  estates,  treacherously  got  pos- 
session of  Castle-island  and  Iniskisty  in  Kerry,  and  hanged  Sir 
Eustace  de  la  Poer,  Sir  William  Grant,  and  Sir  John  Cottrel,"  says 
Walpole.  But  the  oppression  was  more  odious  than  this  historian 
describes  it. 

The  refusal  to  answer  a  writ  of  summons  to  Parliament,  especially 
when  supported  by  a  remonstrance  to  the  King,  signed  in  a  conven- 
tion of  the  Estates  of  the  Kingdom,  was  not  an  act  either  of  rebellion 
or  of  high  treason.     Yet  Ufford  hastened  to  confiscate,  by  his  own 

*  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  i.  358. 


102  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

arbitrary  act,  the  broad  lands  of  Desmond,  and  let  them  out  to  farm 
at  an  annual  rent.  "And  whilst  he  yet  remained  in  Munster,"  says 
the  historian  of  Kerry,  "he  devised  ways  how  to  have  the  Earl  of 
Desmond  apprehended;  which  being  brought  to  pass,  he  afterward 
delivered  him  upon  mainprise  of  these  sureties,  whose  names 
ensue."  * 

These  sureties  were  no  less  than  two  noblemen  and  twenty-four  of 
the  gentry.  The  trick  of  requiring  an  extraordinary  number  of 
sureties  among  the  great  landed  proprietors, — if  it  be  really  the  first 
of  the  kind  resorted  to,  served  as  a  precedent  for  succeeding  Lords 
Justices  and  Lord  Deputies.  L^iford  foresaw  that  Desmond  would 
make  default;  at  any  rate,  he  was  one  to  contrive  that  the  impetuous 
Earl  should  do  so,  and  thereby  afford  the  pretext  of  seizing  and  con- 
fiscating tiie  estates  not  only  of  Desmond  but  of  liis  sureties.  The 
two  noblemen  alone  and  two  of  the  gentry  were  spared:  "The  others 
were  utterly  ruined  thereby."  Thus  three  or  four  hundred  thousand 
acres  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Lord  Justice,  who,  so  long  as  he 
lived,  kept  as  close  and  deadly  a  grip  of  his  prey,  as  any  gigantic 
cuttle-fish  on  the  coasts  of  Newfoundland. 

Encouraged  by  the  success  of  his  tyranny  toward  Desmond  and 
his  gentlemen-sureties,  Ufford  next  moved  against  the  other  branch 
of  the  Geraldines.  The  Earl  of  Kildare  and  a  number  of  other 
noblemen  and  landed  proprietors  were  cast  into  prison,  the  charters 
and  letters-patent  grantin-g  them  their  estates  were  annulled,  and  the 
entire  Pale  was  filled  with  alarm  and  dismay. 

Yet  Edward  III.,  on  reading  the  remonstrance  from  the  Kil- 
kenny Convention,  gave  up  his  project.  The  Earl  of  Kildare  was 
knighted  by  him  for  his  bravery  at  the  siege  of  Calais;  and  in  1354, 
the  Earl  of  Desmond,  now  restored  to  all  his  estates,  was  made  Lord 
Justice. 

But  so  long  as  L^fford  ruled  Ireland  from  Dublin  Castle,  he  made 
himself  practically  independent  of  the  King's  government.     No  one 

*  Smith's  "  Kerry,"  245. 


Address  of  the  Irish  to  the  Pope.  103 

could  leave  an  Irish  port  for  England  without  his  permission;  and  he 
took  good  care  that  no  complaints  about  his  own  misdeeds  should 
ever  reach  the  royal  ear. 

If  the  Officialism  of  Dublin  Castle  contrived  to  secure  itself  im- 
punity in  wrong-doing,  reign  after  reign,  during  centuries,  even 
when  its  tyranny  only  oppressed  the  men  of  English  blood, — what 
freedom  must  it  not  have  enjoyed  when  there  was  only  question  of 
oppressing  or  massacring  "the  Irish  Enemy"? 

In  1314  the  victory  of  Bruce  at  Bannockburn  induced  the 
Northern  Irish,  who  had  never  come  to  terms  with  the  English,  to 
ask  Edward  Bruce,  descended  of  their  own  royal  line,  to  head  a 
revolt  in  Ireland  against  the  common  enemy.  "A  petition  from  the 
Irish  chieftains,"  says  Mr.  Walpole,  "was  sent  to  the  Pope,  setting 
forth  their  complaints  against  the  English,  and  praying  him  to  inter- 
fere and  restrain  the  King  of  England  from  molesting  them.  But 
the  Irish  (Anglo-Irish?)  clergy  were  true  to  the  English  cause,  and 
the  only  answer  vouchsafed  was  the  excommunication  of  the  Bruces 
and  all  who  took  up  arms  against  the  English."* 

We  give  this  author's  statement  without  approval  or  comment. 
But  if  ever  such  an  "answer"  was  returned  from  Eome  to  the  com- 
plaints of  tlie  Irish  nation  or  a  part  thereof,  it  must  have  been  on 
misrepresentations  made  by  England,  not  on  the  ground  that  the 
Irish  had  no  fault  to  find  with  English  rule. 

Listen  to  the  voice  of  the  Irish  themselves  addressing  their  griev- 
ances to  what  may  possiblv  have  been  the  unwilling  and  prepossessed 
ear  of  Pope  John  XXII.,  in  1316. 

"Ever  since  the  English  first  appeared  upon  our  coasts,  they 
entered  our  territories  iinder  a  certain  specious  pretence  of  charity, 
and  outward  false  show  of  religion,  endeavoring  at  the  same  time,  by 
every  evil  artifice,  to  extirpate  us  root  and  branch.  And,  without 
any  other  right  than  that  of  the  strongest,  they  have  so  far  succeeded 
by  base  fraud  and  treachery,  that  they  have  driven  us  from  the  fair 

*  "  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p.  56. 


104  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

and  fertile  lands  in  which  we  dwelt,  and  wliich  we  had  inherited  from 
our  fathers,  and  forced  us  to  seek  a  refuge  in  the  mountains,  forests, 
and  morasses,  like  hunted  wild  beasts.  Nor  can  the  caverns  and 
recesses  in  the  wilderness  protect  us  against  their  covetousness.  They 
pursue  us  even  into  these  dismal  retreats,  taking  from  us  the  posses- 
sion of  the  barren  mountain  tracts  and  naked  rocks,  claiming  as  their 
own  every  inch  of  soil  on  which  we  can  leave  our  foot-prints."  * 

In  quoting  the  words  of  this  remonstrance,  or  petition,  or  address, 
— as  it  may  please  historical  scholars  to  call  the  document, — we  had 
a  twofold  purpose,  to  place  in  the  mouths  of  the  native  Irish  an 
expression  of  their  own  sense  of  the  atrocious  wrongs  under  which 
they  were  suffering,  and  that  this  should  be  understood  in  connection 
with  the  complaints  of  the  Anglo-Irish  about  English  misgovernment 
and  the  oppression  of  Castle  Officialism. 

As  this  latter  continued  ever  to  be,  and  continues  to  this  day  to 
be,  a  monstrosity  and  a  scandal  in  the  eyes  of  all  fair-minded  English- 
men, we  shall  conclude  this  chapter  by  quoting  here  the  opinion  of  a 
recent  writer,  one  occupying  a  position  of  trust  under  the  British 
Government.  AVe  must  ask  the  reader  to  pass  with  us  from  the 
reio-n  of  Edward  III.  to  the  last  decade  of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth. 
Everyone  knows  what  influence  Cecil,  Lord  Burghley,  had  in  her 
councils.  It  will  be  instructive  and  edifying  to  see  how  his  wise  and 
moderate  policy  toward  Ireland  was  thwarted  and  counteracted  not 
only  by  Irish  Loi'd  Deputies  and  Lords  Justices,  but  officials  like 
the  celebrated  Irish  Secretary,  Edmund  Spencer,  and  his  friend  Sir 
Walter  Ealeigh. 

"Burghley  saw  \A\q  evil  consequences  to  England  as  well  as  to  Ire- 
land, of  this  anti-Irish  policy.  But  he  stood  almost  alone.  At  rare 
intervals  and  in  the  earlier  part  of  her  reign  Elizabeth  supported  him. 
Tier  officials  in  Ireland,  however,  obstructed  Burghley  at  every  point. 
In  those  days  the  Irish  judges  were  politicians  as  well  as  jurists.  In 
those  days  the  Irish  Privy  Council   represented  one   interest  only. 


*  Quoted  by  Carey,  Vindidm  IliberniccB,  c,  iii. 


The  Dublin  Castle  under  Elizabeth.  105 

The  liead  of  the  judicial  bench  spoke  of  the  Prime  Minister's  sugges- 
tions of  pardons  and  remedial  measures  as  'agreeing  to  recompense 
felonious  offences,'  and,  instead,  the  Lord  Chancellor's  policy  was 
summed  up  in  one  word  'hanging.'  .  .  .  This  representative  of  jus- 
tice in  Ireland  wrote  a  letter  to  Walsingham,  in  which  he  expresses 
his  opinion  that  it  would  '  have  been  better,  if  ten  years  past  the 
Governor  had  put  on  determination  to  subject  the  whole  Irishry  to 
the  sword.'  The  members  of  the  Irish  Privy  Council  were  as  much 
opposed  to  Burghley's  views  as  the  judges,  and  so  indeed  were  nearly 
all  the  officials.  From  the  permanent  staff  of  Dublin  Castle,  down  to 
the  newly  appointed  magistrates  in  Kerry  and  Cork,  there  appeared 
to  be  a  dogged  determination  to  act  against  the  wishes  of  Burghley, 
and  to  rule  Ireland  by  coercion  alone.  The  combination  of  the  im- 
politic official  element  in  Ireland  was  too  strong  for  the  wise  Lord 
Treasurer.  Carefully  selected  Lord  Deputies  failed  him.  Secretaries 
that  he  sent  to  Dublin  Castle  armed  with  his  prudent  counsel  and 
their  own  good  intentions,  gave  way  to  the  dominating  spirit  of  the 
Pale  and  became  coercionists.  He  had  no  real  Parliament,  no  Eng- 
lish Press,  no  influential  public  opinion  to  support  him.  But  though 
he  could  not  carry  his  policy,  he  lived  long  enough  to  see  the  Neme- 
sis that  was  coming.  .  .  . 

"In  vain  he  said  'do  not  drive  the  Irish  from  the  soil;  do  not 
give  confiscated  lands  to  individuals.' .  .  .  Sir  AYalter  Ealegh  was 
one  of  the  first  to  feel  the  consequences  of  his  own  injustice.  The 
remnant  of  the  Irish  peasants  that  escaped  the  sword  had  hardly  been 
forced  to  cross  the  Blackwater,  to  the  mountains  and  woods,  leaving 
the  fields  of  Desmond  to  the  new  tenants  from  Devonshire,  when  the 
grievances  of  the  landlord  reached  the  ears  of  Cecil.  The  Lord 
Treasurer  and  the  English  Council  had  received  a  significant  report 
from  the  Commissioners  for  surveying  the  seigniories  of  the  escheated 
lands,  dated  from  Youghal,  October,  158G. 

"'At  Lismore  and  Youghal,'  they  wrote,  'we  have  stayed  these 
eight  days  in  meeting  and  bounding  such  lands  as  we  hear  Sir  "Walter 
Rawley  is  to  have,  which  hath  been  exceedingly  difficult  and  painful 


106  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

by  reason  that  the  lands  having  been  long  waste,  and  generally  over- 
grown with  deep  grass,  and  in  most  places  with  heath,  brambles,  and 
furze,  whereby,  and  by  the  extremity  of  rain  and  foul  weather,  we 
have  been  greatly  hindered  in  our  proceeding;  and  for  that  we  find 
all  the  gentlemen  undertakers  and  their  associates  that  came  hither 
to  be  again  departed  into  England,  we  surcease  from  further  dealing 
therein  until  the  spring.' 

"The  following  year  a  rough  survey  was  completed,  and  Ealegh's 
courage  and  vigor  enabled  him  to  begin,  in  the  words  of  his  leaves, 
'the  repeojjUng  of  the  Province  of  Munster.'  At  first  he  murmured 
about  the  physical  difficulties  of  reclearing  the  sort  of  secondary 
jungle  that  had  sprung  up  on  the  removal  of  the  old  agricultural 
population.  Any  natives  that  came  from  the  woods  and  mountains 
were  unfriendly  to  the  new  settlers.  Even  when  a  sort  of  truce  was 
proclaimed,  and  they  were  offered  sustenance  and  wages  instead  of 
the  rope  or  tlie  edge  of  the  sword,  Ealegh  could  not  get  them  to 
assist  in  moving  the  timber  his  colonists  cut  down,  or  to  do  a  stroke 
of  useful  work.  This  form  of  passive  resistance  annoyed  the  Under- 
taker, who  turned  to  the  Government — what  was  called  the  Govern- 
ment— for  a  remedy.  At  first  the  Government  tried  to  assist  him. 
The  refusal  of  workmen  to  do  work  was  to  be  treated  as  a  sort  of 
treason.  New  schemes  of  coercion  were  invented ;  but  they  did  the  set- 
tlers no  good.  Dublin  Castle  at  length  got  tired  of  Ealegh's  suggestions. 

"  Ealegh  then  turned  to  England  and  complained  of  Dublin 
Castle.  Whilst  he  could  not  get  his  own  rents  and  profits,  the 
trifling  sum  payable  to  the  Crown  was  dragged  from  him  by  distress 
warrants,  evictions,  and  costly  legal  proceedings.  His  English  are 
not  protected  by  the  Lord  Deputy.  The  Lord  Deputy  encourages 
rebels  to  push  out  Englishmen  from  his  castles  and  farms.  The 
Sheriff  carries  off  five  hundred  milch  kine  from  his  people  for  an 
alleged  debt  of  fifty  marks  which  Ealegh  believed  he  had  paid,  but 
which  was  not  only  enforced  again,  but  magnified  into  a  debt  of  four 
hundred  pounds.  .  .  .  'The  doting  Deputy,' he  finally  adds,  'hath 
dispeopled  me.' 


Walter  Raleigh's  Baneful  Lifluence  107 

"Ealegh's  despairing  cry  might  have  been  the  eclio  of  the  last 
words  of  the  hunted  Earl  of  Desmond,  of  whose  penalties  as  well  as 
of  whose  forfeitures,  he  seemed  to  be  the  political  heir."  * 

As  we  are  standing  at  the  fountain-head  of  Irish  misgovernment, 
misery,  and  suffering,  these  witnesses  whom  we  call  before  the  bar  of 
public  opinion,  will  throw  light  on  the  present  while  accounting  for 
the  past. 

"One  part  of  Ralegh's  Irish  policy  which  affected  his  own  fate 
and  contributed  to  the  apparently  never-ending  troubles  of  the  two 
Kingdoms,  was  his  successful  opposition  to  the  conciliatory  schemes 
of  the  second  Essex.  It  was  rumored  that  the  Queen  had  offered 
Ealegli  the  post  of  Deputy  before  Essex  was  sent  to  Dublin.  How- 
ever that  may  be,  Ealegh  was  her  most  intimate  adviser  on  Irish 
affairs  during  the  Lord  Lieutenancy  of  Essex. 

....  "The  Irish  manuscripts  known  as  the  Annals  of  the  Four 
Masters,  speak  of  Essex  as  having  displayed  '  the  most  splendid  regal 
state  ever  exhiljited  by  the  Saxons  in  Ireland.'  As  to  his  Irish 
policy  they  say,  '  When  the  Earl  of  Essex  arrived,  the  first  thing 
proclaimed  was  that  every  one  of  the  Irish  who  was  sorry  for  having 
gone  in  opposition  to  the  Queen  should  receive  forgiveness,  that  any 
of  the  men  of  Ireland  whose  estates  had  been  taken  by  the  Saxons 
through  oppression,  violence,  or  illegality,  would  have  a  restitution 
of  the  same.'  No  wonder  the  undertaker  should  determine  to  trip 
up  a  Lord  Lieutenant  whose  views  Avere  so  interpreted  by  the  natives. 

"The  trenchant  style  of  Ralegh  can  be  detected  in  the  Queen's 
answers,  censuring  and  destroying  the  plans  of  Essex.  '  Your  pen 
flatters  you  with  phrases,  that  you  are  disgraced  from  hence,  that 
poor  Ireland  suffers  in  you.  We  will  not  tolerate  this.'  And  in  a 
more  official  despatch  to  the  Lord  Lieutenant  in  Council,  she  tells 
him  :  '  Your  opinions  deserve  reproof  rather  than  answer.  .  .  .  You 
have  been  the  cause  of  corruption  in  religion  by  favoring  popery.' 
As  to  Essex's  agreement  with  the  gallant  Hugh  O'Xeill,  Elizabeth 

*  Sir  John  Pope  Hennessy,  "  Ralegb  in  Ireland,"  c.  15. 


108  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

writes:  '  To  trust  this  traitor  upon  oath  is  to  trust  a  devil  upon  his 
religion.' 

"Eeplying  from  Ireland,  he  said:  'Is  it  not  known  that  from 
England  I  receive  nothing  but  discomfort  and  soul's  wounds?  Is  it 
not  lamented  of  your  Majesty's  faithful  subjects,  both  here  and  there, 
that  a  Cobham  and  a  Ealegh  should  have  such  credit  and  favor  with 
your  Majesty  ? ' 

.  .  .  .  "At  the  trial  he  (Ealegh)  Avas  a  witness  against  Essex, 
wdien  the  latter  exclaimed,  'What  booteth  it  to  swear  this  fox?' 

....  "The  biographers  of  Essex  still  keep  speculating  on  the 
mystery  that  surrounds  his  fall,  instead  of  turning  to  the  mass  of 
Irish  correspondence  now  available  to  writers  and  students.  For  the 
months  of  remorse,  the  worry  and  sleepless  nights  that  preceded  the 
death  of  Elizabeth,  ample  material  can  also  be  found  in  that  unpub- 
lished history.  One  day  the  Queen  adopts  Ealegh's  advice,  the  next 
he  is  in  disgrace.  Then  in  a  sort  of  despair  she  calls  him  back  to  read 
another  batch,  of  Irish  despatches.  Many  years  had  passed  since 
Ealegh  told  her  how  Ireland  could  be  held,  by  vigorous  measures, 
without  any  cost  to  her  exchequer.  He  had  gone  on  repeating  that 
the  true  policy  was  to  uphold  the  '  Inglishe  inhabitants  in  Ireland 
which  are  yet  strong  enough  to  master  the  Irishe  without  any  charge 
to  the  Queen.'  She  acted  on  this  advice,  and  now  after  forty  years 
of  repression,  she  finds  Ireland  more  Irish  than  ever,  more  costly  to 
her  treasury,  and  kept  down  by  the  largest  army  of  occupation  that 
any  English  sovereign  had  sent  across  the  seas.  Though  Ealegh 
had  foreseen  something  of  this, — though  in  1593  he  had  written — 

" '  That  accursed  kingdom  hath  always  bynn  but  as  a  trafique  for 
which  Her  Majestye  hath  paid  both  fraight  and  costome,  and  others 
received  the  merchandize;  and  other  than  such  it  shall  never  be;' 
"though  in  the  same  letter  he  had  said, — 

"'A  million  hath  bynn  spent  by  Her  Majestye  in  Ireland.     A 
better  kingdome  might  have  bynn  purchased  att  a  less  price.' 
"and  though  he  added, — 

" '  Destiney  is  stronger  than  councell ' — 


Walter  Raleigh's  Baneful  Influence.  109 

"Yet  he  continued  to  advise  the  sending  of  more  soldiers  and  the 
wasting  of  more  money.  Up  to  the  hour  of  the  Queen's  death  he 
continued  to  pit  his  counsel  against  the  destiny  that  destroyed  Eliza- 
beth's Irish  policy  and  was  to  overwhelm  himself. 

....  "The  Irish  policy  of  the  Stuart  kings  was  halting  and 
defective.  But  it  was  perfection  itself  compared  to  what  had  pre- 
ceded it  and  what  followed  it.  The  early  years  in  that  glimmering 
of  justice  and  common  sense  brought  some  hope  to  Ireland  and  cor- 
responding disaster  to  Ealegh."  * 

This  is  but  a  peep  into  Elizabeth's  Privy  Council  room,  and  into 
the  council-chamber  of  Dublin  Castle,  where  Edmund  Spenser  is 
Chief  Secretary,  and  where  such  men  as  Sir  George  Carew,  and 
Kichard  Boyle,  Earl  of  Cork,  and  Charles  Blount,  Lord  Mountjoy, 
are  planning  the  settlement  of  Ireland  by  the  policy  of  exterminat- 
ing the  Irish,  and  planting  the  land  with  English  Protestants. 

We  shall  see  this  policy  carried  out.  It  is  only  a  brief  glance  at 
one  of  the  terrible  prospects  before  us. 

*  Sir  John  Pope  Hennessy,  "  Ralegh  in  Ireland,"  c.  40, 


11. 

What  Became  of  the  Country  aistd  the  People  ukder  the 
"Ciyilizixct"  Methods  of  the  English. 

1.  The  Country  : — Devastation. 
^T^HE  address  or  petition  of  the  Irish  to  Pope  John  XXII., 
describes  truthfully,  in  a  few  lines,  the  "devastation"  com- 
mitted systematically  on  these  portions  of  the  Island  held  by  the 
native  Celts.  It  asserts  with  no  less  truth  the  process  of  "extermina- 
tion" carried  on  by  Lord  Deputy  after  Lord  Deputy,  as  well  as  by 
every  noble  or'  gentle  "land-grabber"  who  could  obtain  a  slice  of  the 
territory  won  by  force  or  fraud  from  the  "Wilde  Irishe." 

The  border-land  between  the  English  Pale  and  the  rest  of  the 
Island  was  continually  wasted  either  by  the  Settlers,  who  considered 
it  lawful  to  make  forays  into  the  Irish  country,  carrying  fire  and 
sword  whithersoever  they  rode,  destroying  harvests  and  habitations, 
massacring  indiscriminately  the  unfortunate  people,  as  they  would  so 
many  wild  beasts,  and  carrying  off  their  flocks  and  herds  ;  or  by  the 
enraged  Irish  who  retaliated  upon  the  inhuman  "Sassmach,"  by 
falling  upon  their  settlements  on  every  favorable  occasion,  and 
emulating  their  deeds  of  rapine  and  blood. 

But  we  should  only  convey  a  very  incorrect  idea  of  the  mischief 
done  to  the  land,  and  to  all  the  dearest  interests  of  industry  and 
humanity  therein  by  this  mutual  destruction,  were  we  to  leave  the 
reader  to  believe  that  this  border-land  only  extended  around  the 
narrow  zone  limiting  northward  and  westward  the  small  district  com- 
prised, in  the  14th  century,  within  the  Pale  proper. 

The   enormous   grants   of    land — of  territory,    rather — made   to 
(110^ 


The  Soil  of  Ireland  needs  Careful  Culture.  Ill 

the  Fitz  Geralds,  Lacys,  De  Coureys,  De  Burgos,  &c.,  embraced  the 
greatest  part  of  Munster,  Connaught,  and  Leinster,  with  the  whole 
of  Meath,  and  no  small  part  of  Ulster.  These  great  Barons,  even 
when  they  liad  become  to  the  English  eyes  Hibernis  ipsis  Hiberniores 
('more  Irish  than  the  Irish  themselves'),  were  English  all  the  same, 
and  at  continual  war  wdtli  the  surrounding  Septs,  or  with  their 
powerful  neighbors  and  rivals  of  Anglo-Xorman  descent.  The  wars 
of  the  Desmonds  and  Butlers  often  made  a  desert  of  the  loveliest  and 
most  fertile  portions  of  the  South.  Connaught  was  as  often 
desolated  by  its  own  intestine  fueds  or  by  the  incursions  of  the 
O'Neills  from  Ulster,  or  the  hostile  bands  of  the  O'Briens,  Butlers, 
and  Geraldines.  So  was  it  with  Meath.  Thus  there  was  no  peace 
for  the  land,  no  rest  for  the  earth  from  the  ravages  of  fire  and  sword, 
and  from  the  successive  year's  flood  after  the  desolating  fires. 

For  nothing  is  more  injurious  to  the  plough-lands  of  Ireland, 
than  to  lie  long  fallow.  The  soil  is  not  of  very  great  depth,  and 
retains,  in  a  very  moist  climate,  too  much  of  the  water.  This,  for- 
merly, was  pumped  up  by  the  magnificent  forests;  it  is  so  still  by  the 
growing  crops.  But  when  the  land  is  idle  long,  it  grows  reedy  and 
deteriorates.  Culture  does  not  restore  to  it  the  elements  which 
absorb  the  excessive  humidity,  and  foster  its  fertilizing  qualities. 

Within  the  districts  exclusively  peopled  by  the  Native  Celts  the 
old  system  of  culture  prevailed.  The  corn  was  superabundant  for 
the  needs  of  all ;  the  great  flocks  and  herds  supplied  a  superabun- 
dance of  animal  food,  of  '  white  meats '  especially.  There  were  every- 
where great  fields  of  flax;  for  down  to  the  age  of  the  Reformation 
the  manufacture  of  linen  as  well  as  that  of  wool  were  household 
industries. 

It  still — we  mean  Celtic  Ireland — was  a  land  teeming  with  milk 
and  honey,  the  golden  harvests  waving  in  the  open,  the  glorious 
herds  of  kine  and  the  flocks  of  sheep  pasturing  on  the  hill-sides  or 
within  the  recesses  of  the  forests. 

The  border-lands  and  what  might  be  termed  the  mixed  territory, 
where  Celt  and   Anglo-Irish  lived   together  in  comparative    peace, 


112  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

shared  in  this  abundance.  Indeed  the  keen  eye  of  the  "land- 
hungry"  Barons  had  from  the  first  selected  the  most  fertile  portions 
of  the  country.  The  Golden  Yale  of  Tipperary  obtained  its  name 
from  the  rich  harvests  it  bore,  and  the  over-plenty  it  yielded  in 
medieval,  as  Avell  as  in  post-Reformation,  times.  Throughout  all 
these  centuries,  this  "Land  of  the  West"  had  been,  for  hungry 
English  fortune-seekers,  like  the  Garden  of  the  Ilesperides,  in  -which 
apples  of  red  gold  loaded  the  trees. 

In  spite  of  the  alternate  neglect  and  rapacity  of  the  English 
Government  and  its  representatives  in  Ireland,  in  spite  of  the 
frequent  ravages  of  guerilla  wai'fare  going  on  over  its  surface,  the 
Pale  and  the  English  settlements  generallv,  would  revive  and  flourish 
in  a  single  season  of  peace  and  thrift.  But,  as  we  shall  see,  the 
entire  population  in  these  parts  were  native  Celts. 

Hear  what  is  said  of  this  part  of  the  country  during  the  first  half 
of  the  sixteenth  centur}^  just  as  the  old  order  of  things  was  under- 
going so  deep  and  momentous  a  change. 

"The  English  Pale,  which  was  now  an  extending  instead  of  a 
contracting  area,  was  growing  in  prosperity.  There  was  a  steady 
rise  in  the  value  of  its  produce;  the  land  was  well  tilled,  and  full  of 
cattle;  the  cities  and  towns  were  populous;  the  houses  well  built,  and 
furnished  'with  plate,  furniture,  and  apparel';  the  youth  (in  con- 
sequence of  the  suppression  of  Cathohc  Schools)  were  sent  abroad  for 
education  to  Louvain,  Dole,  and  Kome,  and  to  study  law  at  the  inns 
of  court  in  London.  The  condition  of  the  walled  towns,  both  those 
on  the  coast  and  those  in  the  interior,  which  were  almost  exclusively 
inhabited  by  people  of  unmixed  English  blood,  was  a  great  contrast 
to  that  of  the  open  country :  a  brisk  traffic  was  carried  on  between 
the  citizens  and  the  country-folk,  and  the  seaboard  cities  were  the 
emporia  of  an  increasing  trade  with  other  countries,  more  especially 
Spain.  There  had  been  a  considerable  addition  to  the  'Shireland.' 
Anathy,  by  the  submission  of  O'Farrell,  had  been  converted  into  the 
county  of  Longford;  the  county  of  Connaught  had  been  sub-divided 
into  the  counties  of  Mayo  and  Galway;  and  Roscommon  had  had 


Condition  of  the  Englisli  Pale.  -    113 

Sligo  and  Leitrim  carved  out  of  it.  Thornond  had  been  denomi- 
nated County  Clare,  and  transferred  from  the  province  of  Monster  to 
that  of  Connaught,  The  territory  of  Desmond,  however,  was  in  a 
wretched  condition.  The  hereditary  quarrels  between  the  Earls  of 
Desmond  and  Ormonde  had  turned  the  country  into  a  wilderness; 
and  Sir  Henry  Sidney,  in  the  description  he  gives  of  it,  says  that  '  he 
never  saw  a  more  waste  and  desolate  land,  no  not  in  the  confines  of 
other  countries  where  actual  war  hath  continually  been  kept  by  the 
greatest  princes  of  Christendom.' "  * 

Such  were  the  effects  of  the  wars  between  two  of  the  most  power- 
ful Anglo-Irish  nobles.  It  was  the  policy  of  the  Government  to 
provoke  and  foster  these  feuds,  in  order  to  weaken,  break  down,  and 
destroy  the  power  of  these  nobles,  whom  the  Tudors  and  the  Stuarts 
alike  treated  as  enemies. 

Bat  w^e  return  from  this  brief  glance  bestowed  on  the  Pale,  to  the 
real  Irish  country  and  people. 

Ireland,  on  the  whole,  was,  as  we  have  said,  still  a  land  of  beauty, 
fertility  and  plenty.  It  is  not  a  little  curious  to  find  in  the  con- 
clusion of  a  Memoir  presented,  it  is  thought,  to  Henry  A^IIL,  and 
drawn  up  at  the  instance  of  Cardinal  Wolsey,  the  following  picture 
of  Ireland  as  nature  made  her,  and  as  man's  industry  could  keep  her. 

"Also  the  Pandar  saitli  :  'That  if  this  land  (of  Ireland)  were 
put  once  in  order,  as  aforesaid,  it  would  be  none  other  but  a  very 
paradise,  delicious  of  all  pleasaunce,  in  respect  and  regard  of  any 
other  land  in  this  world,  inasmuch  as  there  never  was  stranger  or 
alien  person,  great  and  small,  that  would  leave  it  willingly,  notwith- 
standing the  said  mis-order,  if  he  had  the  means  to  dwell  therein 
honestly  (i.  e.  honorably  and  as  became  his  condition),  much  greater 
would  be  his  desire  if  the  land  were  once  put  in  order.'  " 

We  have  spoken  above  of  the  culture  of  flax  ;  one  word  about  the 
manufacture  of  linen.  In  general  it  must  be  said,  that  the  in- 
dustries of  the  native  Irish  received  from  their  English  neighbors  as 

*  "  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p.  124. 


114  Tlie  Cause  of  Ireland. 

little  encouragement,  as  did  the  Irisli  literature  and  language.  But 
what  the  former  had  of  home  manufacture,  not  only  sufficed  abun- 
dantly for  their  own  need,  but  were  coveted  by  their  rivals  of  the 
Pale,  and  sought  after  by  continental  peoples.  The  linen  which  was 
the  great  staple  of  clothing  among  a  pastoral  and  peaceful  race,  was 
produced  by  their  own  looms.  It  was,  as  we  have  seen,  extensively 
used  in  the  church  services,  on  the  Altar,  in  priestly  robes  of  every 
description  (for  silk  only  began  to  be  prescribed  by  rule  in  the  14th 
century);  in  the  embroidered  hangings  that  decorated  sanctuary, 
nave,  and  transepts.  It  was  no  less  used  in  decorating  the  halls  of 
the  wealthy  and  the  great.  Its  quality  was  so  superior  that  it  was 
exported  in  considerable  quantities, — till  commercial  jealousy  de- 
manded and  obtained  acts  suppressing  the  trade. 

So  shall  we  presently  see  the  woollen  industry  sacrificed,  and,  in 
due  course  of  time,  every  single  source  of  skilled  and  profitable  labor 
in  Ireland,  dried  up  by  legislative  enactments,  and  farming  alone 
left,  (and  such  farming  !)  as  the  sole  resource  of  the  nation,  while 
the  very  produce  of  this  wretched  agriculture  was,  yearly,  drained 
out  of  Ireland,  as  her  rivers  are  drained  into  the  ocean,  never  to  flow 
back  again. 

Unfortunate  country  !  And  still  more  unfortunate  people  !  It 
were  to  the  hasty  reader  of  history  difficult  to  say,  which  of  the  two, 
the  naturally  fertile  and  teeming  land,  or  the  naturally  intellectual, 
lore-loving,  religious,  and  generous  people,  has  been  treated  with 
more  unreason,  more  injustice  to  the  Giver  of  all  good,  who  made 
both  so  rich  and  so  responsive  to  the  hand  of  intelligent  husbandry. 

3.   The  People. 

What  is,  perhaps,  most  saddening  to  a  man  of  true  Christian 
feeling  and  temper,  is  the  reflection,  that  all  this  horrible  Avrong  was 
perpetrated  by  one  Catholic  people  against  another. 

We,  therefore,  take  up  the  thread  of  our  argument.  We  are 
going  to  account  for  the  measures  taken  under  the  Tudors  for  a  re- 
conquest  and  a  re-plantation  of  Celtic  Ireland. 


Limits  of  the  Pale  in  the  Year  1500.  115 

We  see  that  the  prescriptive  legislation  embodied  in  the  Statutes 
of  Kilkenny,  instead  of  touching  the  conscience  of  a  people  who 
called  themselves  Christians  and  prided  themselves  on  being  Catho- 
lics, was  only  a  prelude  to  more  oppressive  measures. 

At  the  close  of  the  reign  of  Henry  VII.,  the  re-enactment  of  aU 
these  anti-Irish  laws  was  deemed  a  necessary  step  toward  recovering 
in  the  island  the  ground  which  English  ascendancy  had  lost.  The 
fact  is  that  the  men  who  governed  in  the  Castle  of  Dublin  were  bent 
on  reconquering  the  country  by  the  sword,  and  in  enforcing  by  the 
sword  the  reign  of  feudal  or  English  law  and  the  supremacy  of  the 
English  race  and  language.  This  was  an  idea  again  and  again 
urged  upon  the  English  Privy  Council  by  men  who  had  been  sent 
over  to  Ireland  to  inquire  into  the  condition  of  things  there.  And 
their  suggestions  agreed  with  the  ophiion  and  sentiment  of  the 
nation  and  its  rulers.  That  Henry  VII.  did  not,  before  he  died, 
adopt  energetic  measures  to  carry  out  and  supplement  the  Statutes 
of  Kilkenny,  was  due  to  no  lack  of  good  will  to  do  so,  but  to  the 
civil  broils  at  home,  and  to  the  King's  reluctance  to  engage  in  an 
expensive  and  protracted  military  undertaking,  such  as  the  reduction 
by  force  of  a  whole  country  to  uniformity  of  law,  language,  govern- 
ment, and  civil  discipline. 

It  is  not  generally  understood  to  what  very  narrow  limits  the 
refluent  wave  of  Irish  "barbarism  "  and  guerilla  warfare  had  reduced 
the  territory  over  which,  in  the  year  1500,  the  English  domination 
extended.  The  authority  of  the  Lord  Deputy  and  his  Privy  Council 
did  not  extend  beyond  Drogheda  and  the  line  of  the  Boyne  toward 
the  north,  and  southward  beyond  the  line  of  the  Liffey,  and  a  very 
narrow  circuit  around  Dublin.  Even  within  these  limits  the  great 
majority  of  the  inhabitants  were  of  the  Irish-Celtic  race,  speaking 
the  Gaelic  tongue,  following  the  customs  of  their  ancestors,  and  ap- 
pealing to  the  decisions  of  their  Brehon  judges  in  all  differences 
and  law-suits.  On  the  borders  of  their  very  narrow  Pale,  and  be- 
yond it,  wherever  in  any  of  the  Provinces  the  great  Anglo-lSTorman 
families  lived,  they  had  adopted  the  language,  dress,  customs,  and 


116  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

laws  of  the  Celts  among  whom  their  lot  was  cast.  Feudal  tenure 
and  English  law  existed  not  for  them  or  their  numerous  dependants, 
or  it  existed  only  in  name.  Burkes,  Butlers,  Fitz  Geralds,  and  their 
fellows,  were  thoroughly  identified  in  affection,  and  every  patriotic 
interest  with  the  nation  of  which  they  were  a  part.  Their  very 
names,  in  the  districts  Avhere  they  lived,  and  among  their  people,  liad 
been  assimilated  to  the  Irish  surnames  :  frequent  intermarriage  with 
the  noble  Irish  families  had  left  in  their  blood  but  a  very  small 
admixture  of  the  Norman  or  Anglo-Saxon.  They  were  content  to 
be  ruled  by  Brehon  jurisprudence  :  tliey  were  happy  in  the  free, 
simple,  and  virtuous  hfe  which  they  led  with  their  people  around  the 
monasteries  and  churches  which  their  own  munificence  had  founded 
and  endowed.  They  cared  not  for  the  honors  and  enjoyments  shared 
by  their  class  in  England.  They  asked  of  the  English  King  only  to 
forget  them  in  the  midst  of  the  little  principalities  which  they  ruled 
with  no  tyrannical  sway. 

But  English  Kings  and  their  greedy  and  unscrupulous  representa- 
tives in  Ireland,  had  more  than  one  motive  for  not  forgetting  either 
the  "  degenerate  English" — the  "  English  rebels,"  as  they  were  con- 
veniently designated, — or  the  "Irish  Enemy." 

Any  student  or  reader  of  the  annals  of  both  countries  during  the 
16th  and  17th  centuries  must  be  blind,  who  does  not  see  how  the 
"public  opinion"  pre^»iling  in  the  court  circles  both  of  London  and 
Dublin,  pointed  steadily,  year  after  year,  to  renewed  and  energetic 
efforts  toward  the  complete  and  final  subjugation  of  this  "Irish 
Enemy,"  toward  the  establishing  of  the  English  law  and  the  English 
tongue  and  customs  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  rebel- 
lious isle. 

Already  Henry  VII.  had  anticipated  his  granddaughter  Elizabeth 
not  only  in  proscribing  the  Irish  language,  customs,  and  laws,  but  iu 
forbidding  the  very  use  of  Irish  patronymics  and  war-cries.  To  the 
dainty  ears  of  the  men  and  women  familiar  with  the  open  licentious- 
ness, coarse  language,  and  coarser  vices  of  the  English  Court  and 
nobility  at  that  very  time,  the  battle-cries  of  Shanet-ahou  !  or  Crom- 


Blotting  out  0  and  Mac  in  Baptism.  IIV 

abou !  savored  of  ''Scythian  barbarism."  The  clan-names  of  0  and 
Mac,  recalling  or  perpetuating  as  they  did  the  clan-organization  with 
its  patriarchal  customs,  were  suppressed  by  act  of  parliament.  They 
went  further,  even  in  these  good  old  Catholic  times, — as  if  to  sliow 
how  little  the  sweet  charities  of  the  Christian  religion  influenced  the 
savage  legislation  and  heathen  State-policy  of  the  English  Govern- 
ment. They  devised  a  scheme  for  ''anglifying"  the  entire  hierarchy 
of  Ireland  with  the  Priesthood,  and  the  great  monastic  communities 
which  were  the  schools  or  nurseries  of  the  clergy  both  secular  and 
regular.  It  was  sought  to  prevent  Eeligious  Communities  from 
admitting  to  the  noviciate  any  persons  who  were  not  English  descent. 
And  ecclesiastical  superiors  were  forbidden  to  hold  out  any  hope 
of  preferment  to  priests  of  Irish  blood.  Thus  the  entire  body  of 
those  who  were  the  teachers  and  guides  of  the  Iri&h  people  were  to 
be  either  of  the  race  or  the  tongue  so  deservedly  hateful  to  the  nation. 

This  odious  policy  was  sought  to  be  enforced  in  every  household 
in  the  land:  the  family  names  were  to  disappear,  and  Irishmen, 
instead  of  calling  themselves  0  and  Mac,  like  their  forefathers,  were 
enjoined  to  select  the  name  of  some  town,  or  trade,  or  color,  or  office. 
Thus  originated  among  us»the  innumerable  tribes  of  the  Smiths, 
Taylors,  Carpen^ters,  Brewers,  Bakers,  Carters,  Cookes, 
Coopers  ;  of  the  Blacks,  Browstes,  Grays,  Green^es  and  Whites  ; 
of  the  Judges,  Clarkes,  Sargents,  Marshalls,  Stewarts,  Pre- 
VOSTS, — and  the  long  catalogues  of  family-names  ending  in  ton, 
ville,  ford,  ham,  &c. 

Of  course,  Irish  obstinacy,  perversity,  or  by  whatever  term  you 
choose  to  designate  their  invincible  attachment  to  their  own  national 
past,  to  their  race,  language,  and  ancestral  institutions  and  customs, 
— resisted  all  legislation,  all  attempts  at  coercion  or  persuasion.  Shall 
we  not  give  to  this  sentiment  of  undying  attachment  to  the  Celtic 
traditions  its  true  name,  and  call  it  self-respect? 

'•The  demarcation  between  English  and  Irish,"  says  Mr.  Thomas 
Arnold,*  "which  the  civil  government  thus  did  its  utmost  to  main- 


"  Catholic  Dictionary,"  Art.  Irish  Church. 


118  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

taiii;,  was  partially  introduced,  and  with  the  most  unhappy  results, 
into  the  administration  of  C-hurch  affairs.  In  the  counties  of  the 
Pale  it  was  scarcely  possible  for  an  ecclesiastic  of  Irish  race  to  obtain 
preferment.  The  invasion  by  the  Scots  under  Edward  Bruce  in 
1315,  though  ultimately  defeated,  caused  great  confusion,  and  called 
forth  during  its  continuance  many  tokens  of  sympathy  from  the 
Irish  clergy.  This,  says  Mr.  Malone,  was  made  a  pretext  for  '  throw- 
ing off  the  mask,'  and  under  color  of  disloyalty  Irishmen  were 
excluded  from  all  the  higher  dignities  and  benefices.  Yet  it  would 
appear  that  this  exclusion  could  not  have  extended  much  beyond  the 
Pale;  for  if  we  examine  the  lists  of  bishops  occupying  the  Irish  sees 
in  1350,  we  find  that  out  of  thirty-three  names  eighteen  are  certainly 
Irish,  thirteen  English,  while  two  may  be  doubtful.  All  through 
this  period  of  confusion  and  disunion  a  stroiig  religious  feeling  was 
abroad,  animating  the  men  of  both  races  alike,  and  directing  them 
to  common  objects.  In  the  13th  century  we  liear  of  one  hundred 
and  seventy  monasteries  being  founded;  about  fifty-five  in  the  14th; 
and  about  sixty  in  the  15th.  Two  unsuccessful  attempts  were  made 
to  found  universities:  one  at  Dublin  (1330)  by  Archbishop  Bicknor; 
the  other  at  Drogheda,  by  the  Parliament  which  sat  there  in  14G5."* 

In  1475  Pope  Sixtus  IV.  by  a  solemn  bull  authorized  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  university  in  Dublin.  But  as  all  these  educational 
enterprises  were  directed  by  the  prime-movers  therein  toward  not 
only  denationalizing  an  entire  ancient  race,  but  extinguishing  the 
race  itself, — we  cannot  wonder  that  they  utterly  failed  of  their  j)ur- 
pose,  and  that  the  universities  were  never  founded. 

Nor  do  we  regret  it  at  this  day.  Catholics,  Irish  Catholics  in  par- 
ticular, should  be  thankful  that  the  twofold  antagonism  of  race  and 
language  stood  as  an  effectual  barrier  against  the  projects  of  the 
"anglifiers,"  first,  and,  afterward,  against  the  spread  of  the  reformed 
doctrines.  It  is  a  mercy, — both  in  respect  of  the  national, future  now 
dawning  on  Ireland,  and  in  respect  of  the  perils  threatening  Kevealed 

*  Thomas  Arnold,  A.M.,  art.  Irish  Church,  in  "  Cath.  Diet." 


Failure  of  Anti-Irish  University  in  Dublin.  119 

Eeligion  in  England  as  well  as  on  the  Continent, — that  the  native 
Irish  youth  should  not  have  been  drawn,  in  the  last  half  of  the  15th 
century,  into  such  hostile  and  proselytizing  schools  as  the  proposed 
universities.  Their  clergy  would  have  none  of  them;  and  they  were 
well  inspired.  Had  the  Irisli  Clei*gy  become  '^angiified/  and  the 
whole  of  our  episcopal  sees  been  filled  by  men  of  English  lineage,  or, 
still  worse,  by  Irishmen  of  English  culture  and  ambitious  to  Justify 
their  training;  had  our  monastic  and  cathedral  schools  seconded  the 
proposed  universities  in  their  work  of  anglification, — the  whole  Island 
must,  without  a  miracle,  have  followed  England  and  Scotland  in 
their  revolt  against  the  Holy  See.  As  it  is,  the  Irish  race  preferred 
to  lose  everything,  to  suffer  everything,  rather  than  give  up  their  own 
hopes  of  an  independent  nationality  together  with  their  devotion  to 
the  Centre  of  Catholicity. 

We  are  thankful  that  it  is  so.  But  we  must  now  examine  at  how 
fearful  a  cost  the  existence  of  the  Irish  race  and  the  preservation  of 
the  faith  of  St.  Patrick  were  secured. 


PART  THIRD, 


THE  PERIOD  OF  PLANTATION  AND  EXTERMINATION. 


The  Land  Question   under  the  Tudors. 

1.  Henrij  VII.  (U85-1509). 
TTENRY  VII.  ascended  the  throne  in  1485.  The  English  land, 
or  the  English  Pale  in  Ireland  was  confined  to  the  territory 
included  within  the  Boyne  and  the  Lilfey.  "  Dykes  and  forts  were  built 
round  its  borders  for  the  protection  of  the  inhabitants.  The  seacoast 
towns  were  isolated;  and  the  great  Earls  of  Desmond  and  Ormonde 
received  licenses  to  absent  themselves  from  the  Parliament  at  Dublin 
by  reason  of  the  danger  and  difficulty  of  passing  through  the  Irish 
enemy's  country.  The  native  Irish  had  reco\ered  the  greater  portion 
of  the  island;  exacting  tribute  from  the  few  English  settlers  who 
remained,  and  demanding  and  receiving  '  black  rent '  from  the  surviv- 
ing English  counties." 

In  this  emergency  a  frantic  effort  was  made  to  enforce  all  the 
restrictive  legislation  against  the  native  Irish  enacted  since  the  Stat- 
ute of  Kilkenny.  The  Celts  were  simply  outlawed  once  more,  and 
treated  as  such  inside  and  outside  every  town  and  .stronghold  where 
English  might  prevailed.  But,  in  spite  of  the  energetic  efforts  made 
to  drive  back  the  rising  Celtic  wave^  it  overspread  even  the  Pale. 

The  O'Neill  received  annually  a  tribute  of  £20  from  the  barony  of 
Lecale,  and  £40  from  the  county  of  Louth.     "O'Connor  of  Offaly 
(130) 


Policy  of  Repressioyi  and  Extermination.  121 

received  £60  from  the  county  of  Meatli,  und  £20  from  the  county  of 
Kildare;  Mac  Murrough  of  Leinster  received  80  marks  from  the 
Crown.  Even  the  walled  towns,  which  had  hitherto  maintained  their 
independence,  now  purchased  protection  by  the  payment  of  an  annual 
cess.  .  .  .  The  Lord  Deputy  was  within  measurable  distance  of  being 
driven  into  the  sea."  * 

How  repress  this  phenomenal  vitality  of  the  Celt  ?  So  far  fire  and 
sword  have  availed  but  little  to  extirpate  the  race,  or  to  extinguish 
that  indomitable  courage,  which  rises  superior  to  defeat,  disaster,  and 
seeming  destruction.  The  vigorous  Anglo-Norman  offshoots  planted 
on  Irish  soil,  should,  one  would  think,  act  on  the  native  population, 
as  do  the  gigantic  and  fast-growing  parasites  of  the  Tropics  on  the 
trees  of  sturdiest  growth,  inevitably  strangle  them  in  their  embrace, 
and  draw  all  vitality  out  of  them.  In  Ireland,  on  the  contrary,  both 
the  parasite  and  the  native  oak  seemed  to  grow  healthily  together, 
and  to  become  at  length  identified  as  one  tree,  defying  the  passing 
storm  and  the  waste  of  time. 

This  close  union, — or  what  appeared  to  be  a  close  union, — of  both 
races,  and  the  fact  that  they  were  fast  rooted  in  tlie  soil,  were  the  very 
things  which  aroused  all  the  evil  passions  of  the  Officials  in  Dublin, 
and  fed,  as  well,  the  anti-Irish  feeling  in  England.  In  the  latter 
country  it  was  the  national  determination  that  Ireland  must  belong  to 
England,  and  to  become  wholly  English,  it  must  be  peopled  by  Eng- 
lishmen. In  Dublin,  where  "land-hunger"  was  the  living  soul  of 
the  Government,  the  anti-Irish  passion  had  never  meant  anything  else 
but  "the  rooting  out  the  Irish"  and  the  planting  the  land  with  an 
English  population. 

"England,"  says  Mr.  Walpole,  "distracted  with  foreign  wars  and 
evil  strife,  had  for  two  hundred  years  allowed  the  Irish  question  to 
drift.  She  was  now  about  to  take  matters  seriously  in  hand,  and  to 
carry  out  a  stern  policy  of  repression  and  extermination,  not  only 
against  the  Celtic  race,  but  against  the  Anglo-Irish  also.     Henceforth 

*  "  The  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  pp.  68,  69. 


122  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

we  shall  find  but  little  distinction  made  between  the  natives  and  the 
old  colonists — if  any^  it  was  in  favor  of  the  former — and  a  disposition 
to  make  a  fresh  conquest  and  a  fresh  settlement,  and  to  subordinate 
the  old  blood  to  the  new.  '  The  English  by  birth '  were  to  be  the 
children  of  promise;  '  the  English  by  descent '  were  to  be  the  sons  of 
Ishmael."  * 

Henry  VIL  had  a  long  head,  and  took  effective  means  to  help 
forward  this  policy  of  "extermination,"  as  our  latest  historian  rightly 
calls  it.  He  began  by  so  modifying  the  constitution  of  the  Irish  Par- 
liament, as  to  make  it  only  a  passive  instrument  in  the  hands  of  his 
Officials  in  Ireland;  and  then  he  prepared  to  lay  the  axe  to  the  roots 
of  the  tree  by  weakening  and  destroying  the  great  Irish  Chieftains  of 
both  English  and  Celtic  blood. 

In  1494,  Sir  Edward  Poynings  arrived  in  Dublin  as  Lord  Deputy, 
accompanied  by  a  formidable  body  of  English  lawyers,  and  by  one 
thousand  men  at  arms. 

The  Statute  of  Kilkenny  was  forthwith  reenacted,  omitting  only 
the  clause  about  the  use  of  the  Irish  language,  which  it  had  been  found 
impossible  to  enforce.  The  owners  of  '  marsh,'  or  border,  lands  were 
enjoined  to  reside  on  their  estates:  to  permit  the  "Irish  Enemy" 
(native  Celts)  or  the  "Irish  rebels"  (native  English)  to  pass  the 
borders,  was  made  felony,  for  which  the  marsh  lords  were  punish- 
able. No  citizen  of  any  town  could  enter  the  service  of  a  lord  with- 
out forfeiting  his  citizenship.  None  but  lawful  apprentices  could  be 
admitted  to  the  freedom  of  the  towns.  This  was  a  terrible  blow 
aimed  at  the  power  of  the  great  nobles. 

The  English  Lawyers  next  took  in  hand  the  Irish  Parliament. 
Henceforth  it  must  be  made  a  docile  tool  of  English  state  policy. 
"It  was  provided  that  all  statutes  which  had  up  to  that  date  been 
passed  by  the  English  legislature,  should  thenceforward  be  binding 
and  effectual  in  Ireland;  that  no  Parliament  should  in  future  be 
summoned   in   Ireland   till   the   lord-deputy  had  first  obtained  the 

*  "  The  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p.  73. 


Kildare  governs  Ireland.  123 

king's  license  for  its  being  held,  and  liad  snbmitted  to  the  king  and 
the  privy-council  the  heads  of  all  bills  which  it  was  proposed  should 
be  brought  in;  and  that  the  consent  of  the  king  and  the  council  to 
such  bills  should  be  obtained  before  the}^  could  be  proceeded  with. 
Thus,  in  effect,  making  all  legislation  to  come  cut  and  dried  from  the 
Ci-own,  to  be  merely  pro  forma  registered  by  the  Irish  Houses  of 
Parliament."  * 

This  is  known  in  Irish  history  as  "Poynings'  Act."  But  Poynings 
had  a  purpose  for  his  one  thousand  men-at-arms,  as  he  had  for  his 
brigade  of  lawyers.  He  compelled  both  the  Geraldines  and  the 
Butlers  to  march  with  him  into  Ulster  to  give  a  lesson  to  the  Septs  of 
O'llanlon  and  Mac  Gennis.  Meanwhile  some  evil  genius,  an  imp 
from  the  Castle,  most  probably,  had  persuaded  another  of  the 
Geraldines,  a  brother  of  the  Earl  of  Kildare,  to  seize  the  Castle  of 
Carlow,  and  luifurl  the  flag  of  York.  It  was  just  what  the  Deputy 
wanted.  He  turned  back  from  the  north  and  crushed  this  abortive 
attempt  at  rebellion, — for  which  the  Earl  of  Kildare  was  to  be  held 
further  accountable. 

But  although  attainted  for  high  treason  in  the  Parliament  held  at 
Drogheda  by  Poynings,  and  sent  to  England  as  a  traitor,  Kildare  won 
the  good  opinion  of  Henry  VII.  All  Ireland,  he  was  told,  could  not 
govern  the  Earl  of  Kildare.  "Well,"  replied  Henry,  "then  shall 
Kildare  govern  all  Ireland"  ;  and  the  Earl  was  sent  back  as  Lord 
Depvity. 

He  served  Henry's  policy  well.  He  enforced  English  law  and 
established  the  power  of  the  Crown  in  every  part  of  Ireland,  save 
Tyrone,  where  his  nephew,  Turlough  O'Neill,  still  reigned  over  his 
sturdy  Celts.  He  reorganized  the  borough-towns,  garrisoned  those 
that  were  fortified,  built  strongholds  to  protect  the  Pale  or  to  over- 
awe the  Irish  in  the  remote  districts;  broke  down  the  power  of  the 
Earl  of  Desmond,  unconscious  in  so  doing  of  preparing  the  way  for 
the  destruction  of  his  own  house;  and  summoned  Turlough  O'lSTeill 

*  "The  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p.  78. 


124  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

and  his  Celts  to  join  the  royal  forces  in  a  campaign  into  Connaught 
against  the  Earl  of  Clanrickarde,  and  O'Brien  of  Thomonde;  gained 
a  great  victory  at  Knoctow  near  Gal  way,  and  gave  a  blow  to  the 
power  of  the  native  Chieftains  from  wliich  they  never  wholly 
recovered. 

They  had  formed  two  hostile  leagues  :  Kildare  placed  the  sword 
of  England  at  the  service  of  one  of  them,  and  turned  the  fortune  of 
war  against  the  other. 

They  had  not  known,  or  had  not  seemed  to  know  the  hour  when, 
by  uniting  and  striking  together,  they  could  easily  have  driven  the 
English  Lord  Deputy — and  his  Officials  with  him — into  the  sea. 
Xow  the  Lord  Deputies,  -working  successively  and  perseveringly  on 
one  line  of  policy,  will  drive  into  the  sea  or  out  of  existence  whole 
generations  of  Irishmen. 

2.  Henry  VIII.  (1509-15Jf7). 
We  should  mislead  the  reader,  if  we  were  to  allow  him  to  believe 
that  Cardinal  Wolsey,  so  powerful  during  the  first  half  of  this  reign, 
in  any  way  favored  toward  Celtic  Ireland  a  policy  of  peace  and  con- 
ciliation tending  to  elevate  and  develop  the  elements  of  Christian 
life  among  the  people.  It  is,  rather,  to  the  credit  of  Henry  himself 
that  he  did  in  reality  entertain,  at  first,  a  sincere  desire  to  win  the 
Irish  by  a  kindly  government,  bind  them  to  England  by  solid  and 
substantial  benefits,  and  thus  prepare  them  to  adopt  by  degrees  the 
language  and  literature,  the  manners  and  customs  of  their  English 
neighbors,  together  with  the  laws  and  institutions  of  England. 
"Two  distinct  courses  were  the  constant  subject  of  discussion  be- 
tween the  king  and  the  Irish  government.  The  latter  warmly 
advocated  a  policy  of  extermination  and  plantation.  The  Irish  were 
to  be  driven  from  their  lands;  the  chiefs  deposed;  the  cattle,  their 
principal  source  of  wealth  and  subsistence,  driven  off  or  slaughtered; 
and  the  whole  native  population  decimated  by  starvation.  The  land 
was  then  to  be  granted  out  to  English  freeholders,  who  should  pay 
a  head  rent  to  the  Crown.     Henry  shrank  from  the  expense,  if  not 


Vivid  Description  of  tlie  English  Pale.  125 

from  the  brutality  of  sucli  a  course.  His  plan  was  coercion  and  con- 
ciliation." * 

To  all  who  wish  to  look  into  the  currents  of  deep  thought  then 
moving  men's  minds^  and  to  the  drift  of  social  currents,  as  well, — it 
is  of  no  small  interest  to  pause  a  moment  here,  and  examine  how 
clearly  the  mighty  events  and  changes  about  to  occur  in  the  Christen- 
dom of  the  sixteenth  century,  were  foreshadowed  in  the  documents 
laid  before  Cardinal  Wolsey,  his  royal  master,  and  the  members  of 
their  Privy  Council. 

We  are  in  the  year  1515.  In  the  English  State  Paper  Office  is 
still  preserved  a  manuscript  Eeport  on  the  condition  of  Ireland,  drawn 
up,  most  likely,  by  order  of  Wolsey,  and  submitted  to  the  Privy 
Council  in  that  year.  In  spite  of  the  energetic  administration  of  the 
Earl  of  Kildare,  the  English  Pale  did  not  extend  far  beyond  the  very 
narrow  limits  assigned  to  it  above, — that  is,  beyond  the  counties  of 
Uriel  or  Louth,  Meath,  Dublin,  Kildare,  and  Wexford.  Even  within 
this  very  limited  space,  '^the  great  mass  of  the  population  .  .  .  con- 
sisted of  native  Irish,  the  English  having  everywhere  deserted  their 
lands  on  account  of  the  exactions  and  oppressions  to  which  they  were 
exposed.'  In  that  portion  of  the  island  exclusively  under  the  rale  of 
the  ancient  Celtic  chieftains,  there  were  some  sixty  different  districts 
belonging  to  the  native  clans  or  Septs,  and  governed  solely  in  accord- 
ance with  the  Brehon  Law.  The  author  of  the  Keport  enumerates  all 
the  great  families  who  still  held  sway  over  these  patriarchal  commu- 
nities, and  assigns  to  each  its  proper  dwelling  place. 

Among  the  English  folk  outside  of  the  Pale,  who  live  absolutely 
like  their  Irish  neighbors  and  acknowledge  only  the  Brehon  Law,  are 
thirty  '  Great  Captains'  or  Lords.  "All  the  English  folk  of  the  said 
counties  be  of  Irish  habit,  of  Irish  language,  and  of  Irish  conditions, 
except  the  cities  and  the  walled  towns.  Also,  all  the  English  folk  of 
the  said  counties,  for  the  most  part,  would  be  right  glad  to  obey  the 
King's  laws,  if  they  might  be  defended  by  the  King  from  the  Irish 

*  "The  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  pp.  81,  82. 


126  Tlw  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Enemies.  And  because  the  King  defends  them  not,  and  the  King's 
Deputy  is  not  able  to  defend  tliem,  therefore  they  are  all  turned  from 
the  obedience  of  the  King's  laws,  and  live  by  the  sword  after  the 
manner  of  the  Irish  Enemies."  The  picture  he  draws  of  the  masses 
in  the  districts  nominally  under  English  rule,  but  ravaged  alternately 
by  their  own  Lords  and  the  hostile  native  Chieftains,  is  dismal 
enough.  "What  common  people,"  he  says,  "in  all  this  world  is  so 
poor,  so  feeble,  so  evil  beseen  in  town  and  field,  so  greatly  oppressed 
and  trodden  under  foot  ?  " 

The  remedies  suggested  in  this  Keport  would  seem  to  be  taken 
from  'the  Book  of  Pandarus,'  a  famous  work  denouncing  Feudalism 
and  Aristocracy,  advocating  the  cause  of  the  Commons  or  laboring 
and  industrial  classes,  and  urging  the  King  to  befriend  them,  to  pro- 
mote their  interests,  and  to  make  of  them  the  supporters  of  the 
Throne  as  against  the  feudal  nobles.  In  Ireland,  according  to  Pan- 
darus, the  masses  were  oppressed  and  plundered  and  unable  to  pro- 
tect themselves  against  the  aristocracy.  "To  I'aise  the  King's  power 
in  Ireland,  it  was  necessary  to  raise  and  encourage  the  commons,  and 
to  repress  the  aristocracy.  The  former  were  to  be  made  to  feel  that 
they  were  under  the  immediate  protection  of  the  King,  and  they  were 
to  be  armed  and  disciplined  under  responsible  officers,  the  Deputy  to 
be  assisted  by  an  army  sufficient  to  enable  him  to  enforce  the  King's 
authority." 

This  proposal  contains  the  germ  of  the  entire  military  system  to 
be  established  in  Ireland.  One  sees  that  there  is  a  consistency  in  the 
various  English  plans  of  reconquest  and  subjugation,  rooting  out  the 
Irish,  and  planting  Ireland  with  English  colonists,  from  1515  to  1884. 
Whether  put  in  execution  by  Mountjoy  and  Carew,  by  James  I.  and 
Sir  John  Davies,  by  Wentworth  or  Cromwell,  by  Ireton  and  Coote,  or 
by  Orange  William,  or  by  each  successive  British  Minister,  Lord 
Lieutenant,  or  Chief  Secretary,  down  to  Gladstone,  Spencer,  and 
Trevelyan, — it  amounts  to  the  same:  get  rid  of  the  Irish;  they  have 
no  rights  we  need  respect  on  their  native  soil;  and  get  English  colo- 
nists, and  in  default  of  English  and  Scotch,  turn  the  country  into 


Proposed  Military  Organization  of  Ireland.  127 

pasture-land,  and  let  sheep  and  cattle  take  the  place  of  the  "Irish 
Enemy." 

The  sword,  according  to  Pandarus  and  the  Eeport  in  the  State 
Paper  Office,  is  to  be  the  sole  successful  regulator  in  Ireland. 
Neither  the  Privy  Council  nor  the  men  sent  to  investigate  matters  in 
Ireland  and  to  report  on  them,  seem  to  think  for  a  moment  that  the 
Native  Irish  have  any  right  to  oppose  to  these  projects  of  conquest 
and  extermination.  They  proceed  on  the  assumption  that  the  King 
of  England  has  a  right  as  indisputable  to  possess  himself  of  the  land 
and  to  exterminate,  if  need  be,  the  people,  as  if  Ireland  were  an  un- 
inhabited island  near  the  Pole,  or  as  if  the  lives  of  its  people  were  of 
no  more  account  than  those  of  the  wild  fowl  or  the  beasts  of  prey. 

The  whole  scheme  detailed  at  length,  and,  probably,  discussed  by 
Wolsey  and  his  fellow-councillors,  is  entitled  a  plan  of  'reformation.' 
The  name  is  ominous.  Those  in  authority  in  Ireland,  are  "to  ordain 
and  procure  that  every  village  and  town  within  six  miles  of  the  wild 
Irish,  be  ditched  and  hedged  strongly  about  the  gates.  ...  If  the 
King  were  as  wise  as  Solomon  the  Sage,  he  shall  never  subdue  the 
wild  Irish  to  his  obedience,  without  dread  of  the  sword  and  of 
the  might  and  strength  of  his  power,  and  of  his  English  subjects, 
ordered  as  aforesaid."  This  'ordering'  of  the  English  in  Ireland 
consists  in  drilling  the  male  population  everywhere,  in  reviving  the 
use  of  Archery,  in  familiarizing  the  military  with  the  use  of  muskets 
and  artillery;  in  one  word,  the  entire  population  of  the  Pale  and  of 
the  counties  under  English  rule  must  be  made  the  garrison  of  a  vast 
fortified  camp  in  a  country  partially  conquered  and  to  be  wholly  sub- 
jugated. "  If  this  land  were  once  furnished  in  order  as  aforesaid,  who 
durst  be  so  bold  within  the  realm  of  Eno-land  to  rebel  against  the 
King,  as  the  noble  folk  of  that  land  have  done  right  oft  ?  And  if  the 
King  fortune  hereafter  to  be  at  such  distress,  which  God  avoid,  where 
might  he  be  received  for  sure,  and  succoured  so  mighty  and  so 
strong,  as  with  his  subjects  of  Ireland?  .  .  .  This  also  the  Pandar 
saith,  that  if  this  land  were  put  once  in  order  as  aforesaid,  it  would  be 
none  other  than  a  very  paradise,  delicious  of  all  pleasaunce,  in  respect 


128  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

and  regard  of  any  other  land  in  this  world,  inasmuch  as  there  never 
was  stranger  nor  alien  person,  great  and  small,  that  would  leave  it 
willingly,  notwithstanding  the  said  misorder,  if  he  had  the  means  to 
dwell  therein  honestly;  much  greater  would  be  his  desire  if  the  land 
were  once  put  in  order."  * 

It  is,  unhappily,  too  true  that  the  everlasting  bane  of  Ireland — 
intestine  strife  and  warfare  not  only  among  the  Septs  themselves 
but  among  the  great  Anglo-Irish  nobles,  who  were  equally  hateful 
to  the  English, — furnished,  in  1515,  and  all  through  the  reign 
of  Henry  VIII.,  an  opportunity  to  English  Statesmen  to  carry  out 
these  plans  of  conquest  and  military  plantations.  The  English  were 
always  sure  to  find  ready  and  willing  allies  in  some  of  the  Irish  Chief- 
tains in  every  war  they  chose  to  undertake.  Thus,  in  1535,  we  find 
Donogh  O'Brien,  the  heir  to  The  O'Brien,  the  great  Irish  Chieftain 
of  Limerick,  and  the  descendant  of  her  kings,— making  war  on  his 
own  father,  identif3dng  himself  with  the  Butler  family  at  the  very 
time  their  chief  was  forsaking  the  old  faith  for  the  reform  of  Henry 
VIII.,  and  devoting  all  his  energies  to  forwarding  the  English  cause 
in  Ireland.  He  demanded  from  the  Lord  Deputy,  Leonard  Gray,  a 
troop  of  one  hundred  English  horse  with  their  commander  to  make 
war  on  his  father  and  uncle  He  wishes  to  possess  himself  of  a 
country  and  stronghold  near  the  Shannon,  "which  never  was  none 
Englishman's  this  two  hundred  years.  I  will  desire  of  the  King  no 
help,"  he  says,  "but  this  English  Captain  to  go  with  me  upon  my 
father  and  mine  uncle,  the  which  are  the  King's  enemies,  and  upon 
the  Irishmen  that  never  Englishman  was  amongst.  .  .  .  And  for  all 
the  land  that  I  shall  conquer,  it  shall  be  the  King's  pleasure  to  set 
Englishmen  in  it,  to  be  holden  of  the  King  as  his  pleasure  shall  be; 
and  I  to  refuse  all  such  Irish  fashions,  and  to  order  myself  after  the 
English  laws,  and  all  that  I  can  make  or  conquer."  f 

We  have  anticipated  the  order  of  time  and  the  logical  succession 
of  events,  in  mentioning  Lord  Leonard  Gray  and  his  "exterminating" 
expeditions. 
*  Wright,  "  History  of  Ireland,"  Vol.  I.,  book  iii.,  c.  1,  pp.  276-78,      t  Ibidem. 


IIe7iry   VJII.'s  Policy  toivard  Ireland.  129 

Henry  pursued,  whenever  he  could  turn  aside  from  Continental 
politics,  his  own  twofold  policy  of  coercion,  first,  and  then,  concili- 
ation,  toward   t'eltic  Ireland.     He  began  by  playing  off  the  great 
house   of  Butler  against  that  of  Kildare.     The  Butlers  had  never 
identified  themselves  with  the  native  Irish  to  the  extent  to  which  the 
Fitz  Geralds, — those  of  Desmond  in  particular, — had  gone.      It  was 
Henry's  game  to  exalt  the  Butlers  while  humiliating,  and,  if  possi- 
ble, destroying  the  Geraldines.     Kildare  was  (1519),  therefore,  sum- 
moned to  England,  and   (1520)  the  Earl  of  Surrey,  a  connection  of 
the  Butlers,  was  sent  over  as  Lord  Deputy.     After  thus  feeling  his 
way,   Henry  appointed   (1521)    Sir   Piers   Butler,  the   head  of  the 
family,  to  Surrey's  place.     Wolsey,  who  detested  the  Fitz  Geralds, 
and  had  laid  his  own  plan  to  bring  about  their  ruin,  allowed  the 
magnificent   Irish   nobleman   to   shine   and    flutter    about    Henry's 
splendid  and  gay  court.     Kildare  was  even  allowed  to  form  a  matri- 
monial connection  with  Royalty  itself  by  marrying  the  Lady  Elizabeth 
Gray.     He  was  even  encouraged  to  accompany  Henry  to  the  "Field 
of  the  Cloth  of  Gold,"  where  he  shone  next  to  the  King.     Then  he 
was  sent   back  once  more  to  Ireland  as  Lord  Deputy.     During  this 
interval  of  three  years,  the  Earl  of  Desmond  had  been  impelled,  by 
what  evil  counselor  we  need  not  say,  to  enter  into  correspondence 
with  Francis  I.,  who  wanted  to  create  a  rebellion  in  Ireland,  and  to 
assume  somewhat  the  airs  of  an  independent  and  sovereign  prince. 
If  a  plot  had  been  laid  skilfully  by  Wolsey  to  secure  the  ruin  of  the 
Geraldines,  and   if   he   had   been   seconded   therein  by  the   Dublin 
officials,    events   could   not   have   conspired   more    happily   for    his 
purpose. 

Kildare  returned  to  Ireland  in  1522,  and  was  placed  at  the  head 
of  the  government  in  1524,  just  when  all  was  ripe  for  Wolsey's  design. 
The  Lord  Deputy  was  ordered  to  arrest  Desmond;  and  having  failed 
to  do  so,  laid  himself  open  to  the  charge  of  abetting  treason. 
Besides,  all  through  the  administration  of  Sir  Piers  Butler,  Earl  of 
Ormonde,  the  O'Neills  and  their  confederates  had  waged  incessant 
warfare  with  the  O'Donnells.  And  when,  in  1524,  Kildare  was 
9 


130  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

sworn  into  office  at  Dublin,,  it  was  his  kinsman,  Con  O'lSTeill,  who 
bore  the  Sword  of  State  before  him.  All  these  circumstances  and 
many  more  Avere  reported  to  Wolsey  by  the  Butlers,  and  by  Wolsey  to 
the  King.  In  1526  Kildare  was  summoned  to  London  and  lodged  in 
the  Tower.  Keleased  on  the  responsibility  of  the  Duke  of  Norfolk, 
he  is  detained  in  London  Avhile  the  question  of  Henry's  divorce 
agitates  the  whole  Kingdom.  Meanwhile  the  Lord  Deputy  Delvin 
is  taken  prisoner  by  O'Connor  of  Offaly,  and  Desmond  once  more 
enters  into  a  treasonable  correspondence  with  the  Emperor  Charles 
V.  That  very  year  (1529)  beheld  Wolsey's  fall  from  power.  Strange 
to  say,  it  was  Wolsey  who  counseled  the  King  to  send  Kildare  back  to 
Ireland  to  quell  the  disorders  there,  because  he  judged  Sir  Piers  But- 
ler unequal  to  the  task  of  doing  so.  Henry,  however,  who  had  not 
taken  from  Kildare  his  title  of  Lord  Deputy,  was  content  with  leav- 
ing him  this  empty  title. 

Such  was  the  state  of  affairs  when  Desmond's  treason  and  O'Con- 
nor's revolt  made  Kildare  odious  to  the  King.  In  June  1529  Sir 
William  Skeffington  was  appointed  Lord  Deputy,  and  went  to  Ireland 
accompanied  by  Kildare  as  his  adviser.  They  worked  together  for 
some  time,  in  spite  of  the  bitter  feud  which  would  break  forth 
between  the  Geraldines  and  the  Butlers.  But  the  fall  of  Wolsey, — 
the  deadly  foe  of  Kildare,  raised  the  hopes  of  the  latter,  and  made 
him  intrigue  at  court  for  the  removal  of  Skeffington  and  his  own  res- 
toration to  power.  He  succeeded.  In  1532  Henry  consented  to  his 
becoming  again  Lord  Deputy,  much  as  he  distrusted  him  and  all  his 
house. 

The  Irish  Privy  Council,  in  which  Archbishop  Allen,  a  creature 
of  the  fallen  Wolsey,  was  all  powerful,  viewed  the  restoration  of  Kil- 
dare with  anything  but  favor.  Toward  the  end  of  1533,  Sir  John 
Allen,  the  Master  of  the  Polls  and  also  Clerk  of  the  Privy  Council, 
was  sent  to  London  with  secret  instructions  to  make  serious  charges 
against  the  Lord  Deputy. 

A  private  report  to  Mr.  Secretary  Cromwell,  who  had  succeeded 
to  Wolsey  in  the  royal  favor,  purported  to  be  on  the  state  of  Ireland. 


The  Forged  Letters  that  ruined  Kildare's  House.  131 

It  was  a  skilful  arraignment  of  Kilclare's  administration.  Private 
letters^, — a  force  well  known  in  the  Castle  strategy, — poured  in  upon 
Cromwell,  all  supporting  the  charges  made  by  Allen  and  the  Privy 
Council.  The  King  was  told,  in  the  report  of  the  latter,  that  the 
land  'Svas  brought  to  such  ruin,  that  neither  the  English  order, 
tongue,  or  habit  was  used,  or  the  King's  laws  obeyed,  above  twenty 
miles  in  compass."  As  to  the  cause  of  all  this  mischief,  it  arose,  the 
Council  affirmed,  from  "the  committing  of  the  government  of  this 
land  to  the  lords  who  are  natives  of  the  same,  and  the  frequent 
change  of  deputies."  The  remedies  suggested  are  almost  identical 
with  those  mentioned  in  the  Book  of  Pandarus.  The  private  and 
lengthy  report  to  Cromwell  mentions  names,  enters  into  details, 
arrays  facts  and  anecdotes  in  so  skilful  a  manner  that  they  could  not 
fail  to  impress  a  mind  like  the  King's  or  the  Secretary's  with  the 
conviction  that  Kildare  was  aiming  at  making  himself  independent  of 
all  royal  control  in  Ireland. 

Kildare,  as  was  evidently  foreseen  by  the  Officials  in  Dublin,  was 
summoned  to  London  and  committed  a  close  prisoner  to  the  Tower. 
Before  leaving  Ireland,  however,  he  was  unwise  enough  to  appoint  his 
young  son,  the  Lord  Thomas  Fitz  Gerald  (called  "Silken  Thomas," 
on  account  of  his  gaudy  dress),  as  Vice-Deputy. 

Here  comes  in  one  of  those  detestable  agencies  in  such  favor  both 
with  the  English  Government  and  Avitli  its  representatives  in  Ireland, 
— forged  letters  dropped  conveniently,  and  destined  to  hurry  rash 
men  into  the  commission  of  desperate  deeds,  or  to  furnish  some  shad- 
owy ground  for  a  charge  of  rebellion  or  conspiracy. 

Forged  letters*  were  sent  to  Dublin  purporting  to  convey  the 
information  that  the  Earl  of  Kildare  had  been  beheaded  as  a  traitor. 

*"The  enemies,  therefore,  havinj^  wellnip^h  knedded  the  dough  that  should 
have  been  baked  for  the  Geraldines'  bane,  devised  that  secret  rumors  should 
sprinkle  to  and  fro,  that  the  Earle  of  Kildare  his  execution  was  intended  in  England, 
and  that  upon  his  death  the  Lord  Thomas  and  all  his  bloud  should  have  been  ap- 
prehended in  Ireland.  .  .  .  This  false  muttering  .  .  .  was  holpen  forward  by 
Thomas  Canon  and  others  of  Skeffington  his  servants,  who  sticked  not  to  write  to 
certeine  of  their  friends,  as  it  were  verie  secret  letters  how  that  the  Earle  of  Kil- 
dare .  .  .  was  alreadie  cut  shorter,"  &c. — Holinshed's  Chronicle. 


132  Tlie  Cause  of  xveland. 

The  son,  thereupon,  flies  into  open  rebellion,  and  all  Ireland  is  in  a 
flame. 

This  was  what  the  Government  wanted.  The  tidings  of  this 
unhappy  outbreak  so  j)reyed  upon  Kildare,  that  he  died  of  grief. 
The  new  Lord  Deputy,  Sir  William  Skeffington,  arrives,  bnnging 
with  him  new  military  weapons,  a  train  of  artillery,  and  troops  armed 
with  hand-guns.  All  resistance  goes  down  before  such  a  force.  The 
Lord  Thomas  surrendered  and  was  sent  a  prisoner  to  the  Tower  of 
London.  Five  of  his  uncles,  three  of  whom  had  been  openly  opposed 
to  the  rebellion,  were  entrapped  by  Skeffington  into  accepting  an 
invitation  to  a  banquet.  They  were  seized  at  the  table  and  sent  to 
join  their  nephew  in  London,  where,  in  1537,  all  five  were  hanged  at 
Tyburn. 

It  were  foreign  to  our  purpose  to  bring  in  here  the  change  of 
religion,  which  was  happening  at  this  verj'  moment.  Outside  of  the 
Government  officials,  and  the  usual  swarm  of  English  fortune-hunt- 
ers, to  whom  the  King's  favor  was  the  breath  of  life, — there  were 
found  in  all  Ireland  few  indeed  to  accept  the  new  doctrines.  Still, 
and  looking  only  to  the  influence  which  the  great  Anglo-Irish  families 
had  on  subsequent  events,  we  must  remark  here,  that  it  was  in 
1534,  while  the  Lord  Deputy  Kildare  was  a  close  prisoner  in  the 
Tower  of  London,  and  Skeffington's  '  friends '  in  England  and  the 
Castle  Officials  in  Dublin  were  laboring  so  successfully  to  drive  the 
Geraldines  into  open  rebellion, — the  Earl  of  Ossory*  had  gone  to 
London  to  secure  the  ruin  of  Kildare  and  his  family,  and  to  become 
the  'King's  man.'  .  .  . 

Then  did  the  head  of  the  house  of  Butler  renounce  his  allegiance 
to  Rome  and  to  the  ancient  faith,  and  contract  with  the  King  that 
momejitous  alliance,  which  was  to  be  fraught  with  such  evil  conse- 
quences to  Ireland, — to  Irish  Catholics,  especially.  Kildare  liad  left 
Drogheda  for  London,  in  answer  to  the  King's  summons  in  February, 


*  He  had  given  up  his  title  of  Earl  of  Ormonde  to  the  head  of  the  house  of 
Boleyn,  and  taken  that  of  Ossory, 


The  Butlers  go  over  to  the  Neiv  Religion.  133 

1534.     In  the  May  following  occurred  an  event  which  we  leave  it  to 
the  historian  Wright  to  narrate. 

"The  Butlers  were  the  first  great  Anglo-Irisli  family  that  carried 
their  devotion  to  the  King  so  far  as  to  give  their  zealous  support  to 
the  new  order  of  things  in  the  Church.  In  the  May  of  1534,  the 
King  made  a  grant  to  the  Earl  of  Ossory  of  the  government  of  Kil- 
kenny, Tipperary,  Waterford,  Ossory,  and  Ormonde,  and  the  Earl 
entered  into  a  written  indenture  promising  certain  services  to  the 
Crown,  in  the  conclusion  of  which  there  was  a  special  agreement 
tliat,  ^considering  that  it  is  manifest  and  notorious  that  the  pro- 
visions and  usurped  jurisdiction  of  the  Bishop  of  Rome  hath  been, 
and  continually  is,  the  most  and  principal  cause  of  the  desolation, 
division,  ruin,  and  decay  of  the  said  land  of  Ireland,  by  the  abomi- 
nable abuse  whereof  the  cathedral  churches,  churches  in  monasteries, 
parish  churches,  and  all  other,  regular  and  secular,  for  the  more 
part,  in  effect,  through  the  land,  be  in  utter  ruin  and  destroyed;  for 
the  said  Bishop  of  Rome  commonly  hath  preferred,  by  his  provisions, 
to  the  administration  and  government  of  them,  not  only  vile  and 
vicious  persons,  unlearned,  being  murderers,  thieves,  and  of  other 
detestable  disposition,  as  light  men  of  war,  who  for  their  unjust 
maintenance  therein,  some  time  to  expel  the  rightful  incumbent,  and 
other  seasons,  by  force  of  secular  power,  to  put  the  true  patrons  from 
their  patronage,  and  other  their  misorders, — have  not  only  spent, 
wasted,  and  alienated  such  lands  as  the  King,  his  noble  progenitors, 
and  his  nobles,  gave  to  the  augmentation  of  God's  divine  service,  in 
the  churches  of  that  land,  the  exhibition  and  maintenance  of  the 
ministers  of  the  same,  and  the  utensils  and  ornaments  there,  but  also 
by  occasion  of  the  same  great  wars  hath  been  stirred  amongst  the 
King's  people,  and  countries  burnt,  bishops  and  divers  other  persons, 
spiritual  and  temporal,  murdered,  and  many  other  detestable  things 
have  ensued  thereby,  which  would  abhor  any  good  Christian  man  to 
liear,  to  the  high  displeasure  of  God,  the  violation  of  his  laws,  the 
derogation  of  the  King's  jurisdiction  and  regality,  and  the  great  det- 
riment of  his  nobles  and  people;  and  the  King's  highness,  like  a 


134  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

most  virtuous  and  most  Christian  prince,  minding  and  desiring  above 
all  things  the  repression  and  extincting  of  any  abuse  and  enormity 
which  \\\  any  wise  may  be  contrary  to  the  laws  of  God,  or  be  occasion 
to  his  people  to  fall  from  charity  or  Christian  manners,  hath  willed 
his  said  Deputy  to  resist  with  all  his  power  the  abuse  and  usurped 
jurisdiction  of  the  said  Bishop  of  Rome  in  the  premises;  according 
to  which  his  Grace's  pleasure,  the  said  Earl  of  Ossory  hath  promised 
to  his  Highness,  and  by  these  presents  bindeth  himself,  that  he 
and  his  son,  and  every  of  them  and  their  heirs,  shall  not  only  by 
themselves  resist  with  all  their  possible  powers,  everywhere  under 
their  rules,  the  said  provisions  and  the  Bishop  of  Rome's  usurped 
jurisdiction;  maintaining  also  and  assisting  the  King's  Deputy  and 
all  his  officers  for  repressing  thereof,  according  to  the  statutes  there- 
upon provided,  but  also  shall  practice  Avith  all  others,  and  induce 
them  as  much  as  they  possibly  may  to  do  likewise.' 

''This  is  the  earliest  notice  we  have,"  the  historian  continues,  "of 
an  attempt  to  introduce  the  church  reformation,  which  had  been 
effected  in  England,  into  Ireland.  .  .  A  few  days  after  the  date  of 
the  Earl  of  Ossory's  indenture  just  quoted,  the  rebellion  of  Silken 
Thomas  broke  out.  .  .  Ev^en  at  this  moment  the  question  of  religion 
was  not  put  forward  prominently  by  the  insurgents;  although  their 
leaders  found  a  justification  in  the  plea  which  had  so  often  been  set 
up  by  the  English  themselves  on  former  occasions,  that  the  Pope  was 
the  temporal  lord  of  the  Island,  that  the  English  monarchs  derived 
their  right  of  sovereignty  from  him,  and  that,  since  the  King  of  Eng- 
land had  turned  heretic,  he  (the  pope)  could  transfer  it  to  another; 
and  they  now  applied  to  him  for  encouragement  and  assistance."  * 

The  modern  world  has  heard  of  "Historical  Falsehoods," invented 
to  justify  or  excuse  some  great  wrong  done  to  a  whole  body  of  men, 
or  to  a  whole  nation.  Some  of  them  have  been  very  successful,  and 
their  being  so  seems  to  very  many  a  sufficient  apology  for  the  man 
who  first  set  forth  the  lie,  and  for  those  who  propagated  and  per- 
petuated it. 

*  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  vol.  i.,  pp.  345,  346. 


A   G/'eat  Historical  Lie.  135 

No  man  who  knows  the  facts  of  Irish  history  in  the  first  half  of 
the  10th  century,  or  who  lias  made  himself  acquainted  with  the 
motives  which  influenced  Henry  VIII.  in  rejecting  the  papal  juris- 
diction and  authority,  but  will  smile,  when  he  reads  here,  that  "the 
principal  cause  of  the  desolation,  division,  ruin,  and  decay  of  the  land 
of  Ireland,"  was  either  the  use  or  the  abuse  of  the  papal  power  to 
appoint  to  or  provide  for  vacant  episcopal  sees  and  ecclesiastical  bene- 
fices. Thomas  Wright,  who  quotes  at  length  this  lying  indenture,  is 
so  carried  away  by  anti-Irish  and  anti-Catholic  prejudice,  as  either 
not  to  perceive  the  utter  falseness  of  this  statement,  or  not  to  have 
courage  to  nail  the  patent  lie.  The  account  he  gives,  up  to  chapter 
viii.,  of  the  reign  of  Henry  in  Ireland,  is  made  up  chiefly  of  civil 
wars  and  insurrections, — growing  out  of  feuds  between  the  great  Irish 
lords  themselves,  between  them  and  the  English  of  the  Pale,  or  be- 
tween the  great  Anglo-Irish  families.  There  are,  again  and  again, 
plans  and  schemes  of  "  reformation  "  proposed  and  detailed.  But  in 
these  no  mention  is  made  of  the  acts  of  the  Papal  Power,  or  the  vices 
of  churchmen,  or  the  immorality  of  the  native  races,  as  among  the 
crying  evils  which  demanded  the  strong  hand  of  the  reformer.  Cer- 
tainly, no  allusion  is  made  to  the  disposition  of  beneficed  livings,  or 
the  overshadowing  influence  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  as  being  the 
primal  or  principal  source  from  Avhich  sprang  all  the  social  ills  and 
political  disorder  prevalent  in  Ireland. 

Henry  knew  better  than  to  believe  his  own  falsehood.  The  'ruin 
and  desolation '  of  which  he  complained  existed  when  he  wrote,  in 
his  youtli,  his  defence  of  Catholic  doctrines  and  practices  against 
Martin  Luther;  when  he  penned  his  famous  dedicatory  epistle  at  the 
beginning  of  the  book  to  the  Sovereign  Pontiff,  and  expressed  such 
veneration  for  the  papal  office,  such  devotion  to  the  See  of  Peter. 
The  title  bestowed  on  him  in  return  of  '  Defender  of  the  Faith,'  was 
worn  by  him  as  his  proudest  guerdon,  and  still,  by  some  strange 
fatality,  which  might  be  deemed  a  providential  Nemesis,  is  con- 
tin^ied  to  be  worn  by  his  successors  on  the  English  throne. 

What  intrigues,   besides  the  moral  force  employed  by  Thomas 


136  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Cromwell  on  the  Lord  Deputy  Kildare  in  1533-34,  impelled  the 
latter  to  outward  acts  that  might  appear  to  be  disobedience,  if  not 
constructive  treason?  What  part  had  the  religious  convictions  of 
the  Geraldines  and  of  the  other  great  Anglo-Irish  nobles  in  the 
double  tragedy  which  cast  the  Earl  into  the  Tower  of  London,  urged 
his  spirited  young  son,  the  Lord  Thomas  Fitz  Gerald  (the  Silken 
Thomas  of  the  English  Chroniclers),  to  raise  the  standard  of  rebel- 
lion, and  finally  brought  himself  and  his  uncles  to  the  gallows  at 
Tyburn. 

Henry  the  Eighth's  reforming  zeal  in  Ireland, — in  spite  of  the 
quasi-manifesto  contained  in  the  indenture  of  the  Earl  of  Ossory, 
was  not  so  great  as  to  make  him  spend  men  and  money  in  forcing  his 
Irish  subjects  to  take  the  oath  of  supremacy.  Theology  was  only  a 
feeble  stimulant  to  Henry's  action  in  Ireland,  as  compared  with  his 
desire  to  anglicize  the  island.  The  Protestant  doctrines  in  the 
Dublin  Privy  Council,  and  the  reformed  ministers  who  aided  Arch- 
bishop Browne  in  his  proselytizing  labors,  furnished  a  cloak  for  the 
worldly  ambition  and  the  appetite  for  broad  Irish  acres,  which 
entered  so  largely  into  the  motives  of  "reformers"  on  both  sides  of 
the  Channel. 

But,  it  must  be  confessed,  it  was  good  strategy  on  the  part  of 
Henry  to  exalt  the  House  of  Butler  over  the  ruin  of  that  of  Fitz 
Gerald;  and  by  binding  the  former  to  the  cause  of  the  Eeforraation 
to  use  it  as  a  mighty  instrument  in  propagating  the  new  Gospel  in 
Ireland,  while  beating  down  in  succession  the  Geraldines,  and  all  the 
great  Catholic  nobles  both  Anglo-Irish  and  Celts. 

The  name  of  Butler  is  to  be  henceforward  one  intimately  con- 
nected with  the  disasters  and  persecutions  both  of  the  Irish  Pace  and 
of  their  religion. 

The  new  legislation  about  Henry's  supremacy  in  spiritual  mat- 
ters, was,  however,  destined  to  help  him  very  effectively  toward 
breaking  up  the  entire  Brehon  or  Celtic  System  in  Ireland.  Carry- 
ing into  Ireland  the  plan,  so  successfully  executed  in  England,  of 
confiscating  to  the  Crown  all  church  property  of  every  kind,  movable 


Corrupfionist  Strategy.  137 

and  unmovable,  Henry  held  in  liis  hand  the  most  tempting  bribes  to 
be  offered  to  the  nobles  who  should  elect  to  follow  the  example  of  the 
Earl  of  Ossory. 

The  offer  of  Church  lands  and  edifices  with  their  revenues,  on  the 
one  hand,  and,  on  the  other,  the  bestowing  on  the  Irish  Chiefs  of 
titles  of  nobility  and  peerages,  and  of  the  grant  of  the  tribal  lands  in 
fee  simple  to  be  held  from  the  King  in  perpetuity,  and  independent- 
ly of  their  subject  Septs, — this  was  a  prospect  of  emolument,  security, 
and  splendid  rank  which  few  apparently  could  resist. 

Let  us  see  how  this  campaign  of  corruption  succeeded  in  Ireland, 
ending  with  the  confiscation  of  vast  tracts  of  land,  taken  unrighteous- 
ly from  THE  People,  the  only  lawful  possessors,  and  acknowledged 
as  such.  It  is  most  important  here,  in  order  to  establish  on  firm 
historical  grounds  the  Case  of  the  Irish  People  under  its  twofold 
aspect, — of  their  Rights  of  Property  violated,  and  their  Rights  of 
Conscience  ignored,  tliat  we  should  base  every  position  we  take  upon 
the  testimony  of  our  adversaries. 

"Henry,"  says  Mr.  Walpole,  "having  carried  his  point  in  Eng- 
land, proceeded  to  do  the  same  in  the  sister  isle.  The  only  oppo- 
sition likely  to  be  met  with  was  from  the  clergy,  who  smelt  heresy 
afar  off.  But  the  mass  of  the  Irish  people,  both  natives  and 
colonists,  had  hardly  so  much  as  heard  of  Lutheranism.  The 
English  lords  and  Irish  chiefs  looked  on  the  King's  usurpation  of  the 
headship  of  the  church  as  a  matter  of  complete  indifference,  only 
concerning  himself  and  the  Pope;  and  never  having  had  themselves 
the  smallest  scruple  in  burning  and  plundering  churches,  cathedrals, 
and  monasteries,  were  ready  enough  to  see  the  church  lands  appro- 
priated when  there  was  a  prospect  of  liaving  a  share  in  the  spoil."  * 

The  sacrileges  and  horrors  committed  against  ecclesiastical  edifices 
and  persons  during  the  incessant  wars  of  province  against  province 
and  Sept  against  Sept,  justify,  unhappily,  the  first  part  of  this  last 
statement;  the  other  part  is  justified  by  the  conduct  of  the  great 
Irish  nobles,  as  we  shall  see  presently. 

*  "  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  89,  90. 


138  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

But  was  there,  in  Ireland,  any  solid  ground  for  reforming  even, 
not  to  say  dissolving,  the  monastic  institutions,  and  thereby  affording 
a  pretext  for  seizing  on  their  property  and  revenues  ?  Here  is  the 
peremptory  answer: 

"There  was  considerably  less  ground  for  dissolving  the  religious 
houses  in  Ireland  than  those  in  England.  The  charge  of  immoral 
and  sumptuous  living  was  not  even  attempted.  It  was  true  that,  as 
in  England,  they  were  corporations  holding  large  tracts  of  land  in 
mortmain;  *  but,  in  the  hideous  condition  of  turbulence  and  poverty 
in  which  society  in  Ireland  then  groaned,  the  religious  houses,  like 
those  on  the  continent  in  the  middle  ages,  were  as  lamps  in  the 
darkness,  and  as  rivers  in  a  thirsty  land.  Though  frequently 
plundered  by  all  contending  parties,  they  held  together  the  frag- 
ments of  learning  and  enlightenment,  which  would  otherwise  have 
died  out.  They,  to  some  extent,  occupied  the  position  of  universi- 
ties and  schools,  being  the  only  places  where  any  education  could 
be  obtained.  .They  served  as  inns  and  hostelries,  where  any  who 
traveled  from  place  to  place  could  obtain  accommodation,  and  fre- 
quently provided  the  Lord  Deputy  himself  with  food,  forage,  and 
lodging.  Like  the  houses  in  England,  they  dispensed  charity  to 
the  needy,  and,  unlike  the  houses  in  England,  themselves  served  the 
ruined  parish  churches  instead  of  absorbing  the  revenue  and  appoint- 
ing a  vicar  on  a  pittance  to  do  the  work.  These  pleas,  however, 
were  not  considered  by  Henry.  He  had  abolished  the  abbeys  and 
the  priories,  the  monasteries  and  the  nunneries,  in  England,  and  he 
would  do  the  same  in  Ireland.  Besides,  lie  wanted  tlieir  lyroj^erty  for 
purposes  of  his  own.''''  f 

A  few  pages  further  on  the  same  author  tells  us  that  "The  bulk 
of  the  land  surveyed  in  Henry's  reign  was  granted  either  for  a  real  or 
a  nominal  price  to  the  Englishmen  composing  the  King's  council  in 


*  As  we  remarked  in  speaking  of  land  tenure  under  the  Brehon  Law,  Church 
and  Monastery  lands  were  not  absolutely  alienated;  the  altum,  dominium  belonj^ed 
to  the  Sept. 

+  "  The  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p.  89-91. 


Lord  Leonard  Gray.  139 

Dublin,  the  corporate  towns,  and  some  of  the  Irish  and  Anglo-Irish 
chiefs;  the  principal  recipients  being  the  judges,  the  lords  of  the 
Pale,  and  a  few  officers  of  the  army."* 

Upward  of  400  houses  with  tlieir  landed  property  were  thus  swept 
away  into  the  King's  power.  Of  the  struggle  in  the  Irish  Parlia- 
ment, when  the  Bill  of  Supremacy  and  the  Acts  connected  with  the 
religious  innovations  were  brought  in,  we  need  not  make  lengthened 
mention.  The  Lords  in  the  upper  house  and  the  Gentlemen  in  the 
lower  were  not  a  little  interested  in  letting  matters  proceed  smoothly. 
The  Clergy  were  not  to  be  bought  over  by  bribes  or  promises,  nor  to 
be  awed  by  any  threats  which  the  King  or  his  subordinates  might 
make.  The  representatives  of  the  Clergy  in  the  Commons  were  at 
length  excluded  from  all  "voice  and  suffrage";  and  so  the  Act  of 
Supremacy  became  the  law  of  the  land,  and  all  appeals  to  Eome  were 
forbidden  under  the  penalties  of  high  treason. 

Thus,  besides  the  sequestration  of  ecclesiastical  property,  wide 
doors  were  opened  by  these  Acts  toward  constructive  treason,  forfeit- 
ure of  estates,  and  wholesale  confiscation.  Such  were  the  terrible 
shadows  which  coming  events  were  casting  on  men's  minds  and 
hearts  in  that  doomed  land  of  Erin. 

Lord  Deputy  Leonard  Gray,  who  imposed  these  measures  on  the 
Irish  Parliament,  was  a  kinsman  of  Henry  VIII.,  and,  like  his 
master,  one  whose  will  knew  no  obstacles  toward  its  purpose.  He 
came  to  Ireland  in  1535,  and  carried  fire  and  sword  among  the 
O'Connors  of  Offaly,  as  well  as  into  the  territory  of  the  O'Briens,  and 
into  the  domains  of  Desmond  and  the  Barrys.  Connaught  next  felt 
the  weight  of  Leonard  Gray's  arm,  and  the  hardness  of  his  heart  of 
steel;  and,  finally,  O'Neill,  in  the  north,  was  overawed  by  the  Lord 
Deputy's  energy  and  unvaried  success,  while  O'Donnell  was  encour- 
aged to  lay  waste  the  territories  of  his  rival  and  neighbor. 

What  plans  the  English  entertained  at  this  time  with  regard  to 
the  extirpation  of  the  Irish,  and  how  the  wars  of  Leonard  Gray  were 

*  "Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p.  92. 


140  The  Cause  of  Ireland, 

carried  on,  and  how  it  was  recommended  to  his  successors  and  sub- 
ordinates to  wage  war  with  the  Irish, — it  will  be  worth  our  while  to 
see.  All  through  these  fearful  details,  so  coolly  drawn  up  and 
calmly  considered  by  an  English  Privy  Council, — one  idea  predomi- 
nates: that  all  means  to  wrest  the  soil  of  Ireland  from  the  Irish  are 
to  be  made  use  of;  and  that  Ireland  must,  at  all  costs,  be  colonized 
by  Englishmen. 

In  a  lengthy  memoir  prepared  for  the  King  and  his  councillors, 
and  preserved  in  the  State  Paper  Office,  suggestions,  most  probably 
inspired  by  the  Butlers  and  Lord  Leonard  Gray,  if  not  drawn  up  by 
them, — are  given  on  the  best  method  of  securing  and  enlarging  the 
Pale.  O'Connor  of  OfFaly  was  to  be  reduced.  Wicklow  was  to  be 
strongly  fortified  and  well  garrisoned.  It  was,  the  memior  said,  abso- 
lutely necessary  "to  inhabit  the  same  with  a  fourscore  English  free- 
holders, and  the  residue  to  be  of  the  English  Pale,  and  that  every  of 
the  same  eighty  have  a  hundred  acres  of  the  lande  next  about  the 
town,  paying  for  every  acre  yearly  to  the  King  two  pence,  which  shall 
be  a  good  living  for  them,  profitable  for  the  King,  and  surety  for  all 
the  country."  In  like  manner  the  most  favorable  strategic  positions 
throughout  the  borders  of  Leinster  should  be  occupied  and  peopled. 
"Then  shall  all  Leinster  be  clear  English  without  any  of  the  Irishry 
among  them."  A  thousand  well  armed  men  were  to  occupy  Ulster 
simultaneously,  "walling  and  inhabiting"  the  northern  part  of  the 
island  in  its  length  and  breadth,  Carlingford,  Ardglass,  Armagh, 
Carrickfergus,  Sligo,  and  other  towns, — establishing  purely  English 
settlements  in  the  neighboring  districts.  Athlone,  under  Lord  Delvin 
and  his  son,  with  six  hundred  men-at-arms,  was  to  become  a  great 
central  English  stronghold,  which  should  overawe  and  reduce  the 
surrounding  Septs.  Another  thousand  men  should  concentrate  in 
Limerick,  to  be  joined  their  by  Lord  Ossory  and  his  forces.  The 
two  Thomonds  were  then  to  be  overrun,  and  planted  with  similar 
garrisons  and  colonies.  After  which  Connaught  was  to  be  attacked, 
the  Burkes  of  Clanrickard,  who  "bear  hatred  to  the  Irishry,"  being 
counted  on  as  powerful  allies.     All  the  "Englishry"  in  Munster  were 


Proposed  Methods  of  Warfare  against  the  Celt.  141 

to  combine,  meanwliile,  and  assail  the  Mac  Carthys  and  other  Celtic 
Chiefs.  Cromwell  was  urged  so  to  bestir  himself  in  this  matter,  that 
"these  devices  be  begun  this  next  March  (1537)  and  so  to  be  through- 
out continued  all  that  next  year  following;  and  then  the  King's 
Highness,  with  certain  of  his  council,  to  come  the  next  somer  there- 
after, with  no  great  power,  and  to  establish  for  ever  continual  lauda- 
ble order,  according  to  the  laws  of  God,  and  of  this  realm."  * 

"The  cruel  manner  in  which  this  war  was  to  be  carried  on,  i^ 
described  in  a  paper  supplementary  to  the  one  just  mentioned — the. 
only  excuse  for  it  is  (says  Wright),  that  it  is  a  system  which  the  Eng- 
lish had  partly  learned  from  the  Irish  themselves,  who  were  certainly 
according  to  this  plan,  to  be  treated  on  the  footing  of  Savages."  f 

Now,  dear  Keader,  weigh  attentively  each  sentence  in  the  folloW'- 
ing  extract  from  this  supplementary  paper: 

"The  very  living  of  the  Trishry  doth  clearly  consist  in  two  things; 
and  take  away  the  same  from  them,  and  they  are  past  for  ever  to  re- 
cover, or  yet  to  annoy  any  subject  in  Ireland.  Take  first  from  them 
their  corn,  and  as  much  as  cannot  be  husbanded  and  had  into  the 
hands  of  such  as  shall  dwell  and  inhabit  in  their  lands  and  country, 
to  burn  and  destroy  the  same,  so  as  the  Irishry  shall  not  live  theve- 
upon;  then  to  have  their  cattle  and  beasts,  which  should  be  most 
hardest  to  come  by,  for  they  shall  be  in  the  woods,  and  yet  with 
guides  and  policy,  they  be  oft  had  and  taken  in  Ireland  at  this  day. 
And  again,  by  the  reason  that  the  several  armies,  as  I  devised  in  ray 
other  paper,  should  proceed  at  once,  it  is  not  possible  for  the  said 
Irishry  to  put  or  flee  their  cattle  from  one  country  into  another,  but 
that  one  of  the  armies,  with  their  guides  and  assistors,  by  hap,  policy, 
espial,  or  some  other  mean,  shall  come  thereby;  and  admitting  the 
impossibility,  so  that  their  cattle  were  saved,  yet,  in  continuance  of 
one  year,  the  same  cattle  shall  be  dead,  destroyed,  stolen,  strayed, 
and  eaten;  for  by  reason  of  the  continual  removing  of  them,  going 
from  one  wood  to  another,  as  they  shall  be  forced  to  do,  their  lying 

*  Quoted  by  Wright,  vol.  i.,  pp.  321,  322.  t  Ibidem. 


142  Tlie  Cause  of  Ireland. 

out  all  tlie  winter,  and  narrow  pastures,  tliey  shall  be  stolen,  lost, 
strayed,  and  dead,  and,  almost  all  of  them,  when  all  the  great  num- 
ber of  the  Irishry,  so  being  in  exile,  being  together,  with  their 
tenants  and  followers,  taking  their  corn  and  other  victual,  shall  have 
no  manner  of  sustenance,  but  only  the  residue  of  the  same  cattle, — 
if  there  shall  be  any, — whereby  their  said  cattle  must  in  short  time 
be  consumed;  and  then  they  shall  be  without  corn,  victuals,  or  cattle, 
and  thereof  shall  ensue  the  putting  in  effect  of  all  these  wars  against 
them."  * 

This  means  simply  one  thing,  Extermination.  What  the  sword 
will  have  failed  to  reach,  that  starvation  shall  surely  overtake.  We 
seem  to  be  already  in  the  days  of  Elizabeth,  and  to  see  her  Chief 
Secretary  for  Ireland,  Edmund  Spenser,  writing  for  her  instruction 
his  "View  of  Ireland,"  in  1598,  and  within  the  walls  of  Dublin  Castle: 
we  hear  him  describing  for  the  Mountjoys,  the  Carews,  the  Chiches- 
ters,  the  fearful  desolation  of  !Munster,  and  amid  the  wasted,  corpse- 
strewn  fields  the  famine-stricken  fugitives  creeping  forth  on  hands 
and  feet,  prowling  among  the  dead  for  some  kind  of  food. 

Spenser  wrote,  not  for  the  purpose  of  moving  English  Lord  Depu- 
ties, or  Lord  Justices,  or  brave  English  soldiers  in  Ireland,  to  com- 
miseration by  the  spectacle  of  what  inhuman  warfare  can  bring  a 
whole  province  to;  but  for  the  express  purpose  of  encouraging  all 
such  officials  so  to  deal  with  the  other  provinces,  in  order  to  ac- 
complish thoroughly  the  work  of  England  in  the  Sister  Isle, — 
Extermination. 

We  shall  see,  hereafter,  how  Cromwell, — another  of  this  ill-omened 
name, — will  take  up  the  sword  of  Leonard  Gray,  and  carry  out  to  the 
letter  not  only  the  suggestions  presented  in  these  two  papers,  but 
those  of  Chief  Secretary  Spenser. 

The  fate  of  the  five  Geraldines  hung  in  one  day  at  Tyburn,  and 
the  terrible  hostings  of  Lord  Leonard  Gray,  taught  the  Irish  that  the 
Tudor  Eule  differed  essentially  from  that  of  any  preceding  line  of 

*  Quoted  by  "Wright,  vol.  i.,  pp.  321,  322. 


Were  the  Celtic  Chieftains  Fools  or  Knaves  f  143 

English  Sovereigns.  The  high-handed  measures  employed  in  the 
Parliament  of  1537  to  get  rid  of  the  Popish  recusants  and  to  sanction 
the  sequestration  of  Church  property,  as  well  as — what  was  far  more 
repugnant  to  the  national  heart — the  suppression  of  the  religious 
communities,  spoke  plainly  enough,  and  meant,  that  the  King's  will 
was  the  supreme  law. 

Now,  will  the  Irish  Chieftains, — not  the  representatives,  mark 
well — for  the  Septs  are  not  constituencies, — but  the  freely  chosen 
rulers  and  guides  of  the  tribal  communities, — will  they  accept  the 
bribe  which  Henry  VIII.  is  about  to  offer  them  ?  Will  they  abjure 
their  dependence  on  their  people,  to  be  dependent  on  the  royal  will  ? 
Will  they  barter  away  the  most  sacred,  the  most  cherished,  the  most 
inviolable  rights  of  their  brethren  for  feudal  rank  and  title,  and  an 
entailed  estate  ? 

Let  us  see. 

We  are  in  1510.  A  Parliament  is  sitting  m  Dublin.  "There  was 
seen  a  sight  which  had  never  been  witnessed  in  Ireland  before:  the 
English  lords  and  the  Irish  chiefs  sitting  beside  each  other  in  a 
national  assembly.  The  Earl  of  Ormond  with  McGillapatrick  of 
Upper  Ossory;  the  Earl  of  Desmond,  and  tlie  Lords  Barry,  Roche, 
and  Fitzmaurice,  with  the  Tanist  of  Thomond;  the  barons  of  the 
Pale  with  O'Moore,  O'Reilly,  and  McMurrough;  Lord  Bermingham 
of  Atheury,  and  McWilliam  Bourke.  The  Speaker's  address  con- 
cerning the  business  of  the  session  was  translated  into  Irish  by 
Ormonde.  The  Act  of  Supremacy  Avas  accepted  and  confirmed;  and 
a  bill  was  passed  conferring  on  Henry  and  his  heirs  the  title  of  King, 
instead  of  Lord,  of  Ireland.  The  chiefs  flung  down  their  girdles, 
skeins,  and  caps  in  acknowledgment  of  Henry  as  their  liege  lord. 
Dublin  was  en  fete:  bonfires  were  lit,  guns  fired,  wine  flowed  in  the 
street;  all  prisoners,  except  those  detained  on  capital  charges,  were 
set  at  liberty;  and  a  general  pardon  was  published  by  the  King 
throughout  all  his  dominions."  * 

*  "  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p.  94. 


144  Tlie  Causa  of  Ireland. 

We  should  be  glad  to  believe  tliat  this  narrative  is  so  highly  col- 
ored that  its  substantial  truth  might  well  be  questioned.  The  facts 
are  taken  from  Wright's  History  of  Ireland.  All  the  liturgic  forms 
had  as  yet  undergone  no  alteration,  so  that  the  Irish  members  of 
Parliament,  who  rode  in  procession  to  St.  Patrick's,  where  Arch- 
bishop Browne  celebrated  Pontifical  High  Mass,  may  have  been  easily 
deceived  into  the  belief  that  no  change  was  contemplated  in  their 
religion.  The  substitution  of  the  King  for  the  Pope  as  supreme  head 
of  the  Church  in  his  own  realm,  was  looked  upon,  probably,  as  a  mere 
political  or  feudal  change. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  many  of  these  Irish  lords  and  chieftains  lived 
to  look  back  on  that  day  with  shame  and  grief.  Henry,  thanks  to 
the  energy  of  Lord  Leonard  Gray,  had  achieved  in  Ireland  a  success 
that  no  English  sovereign  before  him  could  boast  of.  And  yet,  a 
fortnight  before  the  meeting  of  this  Parliament,  Leonard  Gray  had 
been  beheaded  as  a  traitor,  for  his  conduct  in  Ireland.  He  had  fa'ilen 
a  victim  to  the  enmity  of  the  Dublin  Privy  Council. 

Such  was  Henry  VIII. 

The  two  great  northern  Chiefs,  O'Neill  and  O'Donnell,  had  not 
appeared  in  this  Parliament.  The  Lord  Deputy,  Sir  Anthony  Sent- 
leger,  lost  no  time  in  enforcing  and  obtaining  their  submission.  One 
after  the  other,  all  the  great  lords,  Anglo-Irish  and  Celts,  were 
bullied,  coaxed,  or  bribed  to  make  their  submission  to  the  King,  to 
acknowledge  themselves  his  vassals,  accept  in  return  a  title  and  a 
peerage,  with  their  lands  in  fee  simple,  and  ample  grants  of  church 
property  to  bind  them  to  the  new  order  of  things. 

It  was  a  strange  and  humiliating  spectacle. 

First,  there  was  a  division  of  the  spoils  of  the  Church,  and,  next, 
a  division  of  the  spoils  of  the  People.  In  1538  twenty-four  abbeys 
and  priories  were  surrendered  to  the  Crown,  or,  rather,  forcibly 
taken  possession  of.  These  were  within  the  Pale.  In  the  Irish 
districts  the  religious  communities  had  continued  to  subsist  and 
do  their  work  among  the  people.  But  with  the  submission  of 
the  Irish   Chieftains  these  communities   came   within    the   law  of 


The  Celtic  Cliiefs  sell  their  People.  145 

suppression,  and  were  handed  over,  as  a  general  rule,  to  the 
Chief  of  each  Sept  or  district  as  a  reward  for  his  accepting  the 
King's  supremacy. 

In  Thomond,  the  O'Brien's  country,  this  great  Chief,  now  created 
Earl  of  Thomond  and  Baron  Inchiqui]i,  had  a  gift  of  all  religious 
houses,  except  those  belonging  to  the  bishops.  The  Tanist  of  Tho- 
mond, Sir  Donough  O'Brien,  petitioned  hard  for  "some  name  of 
honor,"  and  that  he  might  hold  his  own  lands  in  fee  simple.  To  him 
waf:  ^^iven  the  great  abbey  of  Clare  with  the  title  of  Baron  Ibrackan, 
and  the  earldom  of  Thomond  after  the  death  of  his  uncle.  Mac 
Gillapatrick  was  created  Baron  of  Upper  Ossory,  and  was  made  pro- 
pr;  jtor  of  the  monasteries  of  Aghadoc  and  Aghmacarte.  Mac  William 
Bourke  was  made  Earl  of  Clanrickard,  and  gratified  with  the  owner- 
ship of  many  a  broad  church-land  in  Galway.  Mac  Murrough 
became  Baron  of  BallN^an;  O'Connor  Baron  of  Otfaly,  O'Donnell  Earl 
of  Tyrconnell,  Con  O'Neill  Earl  of  Tyrone,  and  his  illegitimate  son 
Baron  of  Dungannon. 

In  Ireland  gold  and  silver  money  had  hitherto  been  very  scarce; 
and,  sooth  to  say,  the  people  had  but  little  felt  the  need  of  it.  The 
new  nobles  were  now  given  large  sums  of  money  from  the  royal  treas- 
ury, and  to  the  highest  even  among  them  suitable  apparel  for  wearing 
in  Parliament  or  appearing  at  Court.  And  to  each  a  house  in  Dub- 
lin was  made  over,  as  a  residence  during  the  sessions  of  the  legislature. 
Men's  heads,  like  those  of  children  on  a  birthday,  were  turned  by  all 
this  novelty,  and  unusual  splendor. 

In  August,  1542,  O'Neill  went  in  person  to  London  to  solicit  from 
the  King  the  title  of  Earl  of  Ulster.  He  had,  however,  to  content 
himself  with  that  of  Tyrone.  His  example  was  followed  by  all  the 
other  great  Irish  Chieftains,  who  presented  themselves  to  the  King, 
and  preferred  their  respective  claims. 

"A  paper  is  still  preserved  in  the  State  Paper  Office  containing  an 

abstract  of  the  requests  which  these  Irish  chiefs  came  to  present  to 

the  throne,  which  was  drawn  up  as  a  memorial  for  the  King  previous 

to  their  presentation.     They  all  desired  a  grant  from  the  Crown  of 

10 


]46  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

their  lands  and  jurisdictions^  by  English  tenure,  and  a  general  pardon 
for  all  past  offences."  * 

All  entered  into  formal  indentures  with  the  King.  The  great 
lords  promised  to  send  their  sons  to  be  educated  at  the  English  court. 
The  inferior  chiefs  bound  themselves  to  pa}^  a  head-rent  for  their 
cattle,  and  to  assist  the  Lord  Deputy  in  his  "hostings."  The  King 
was  to  protect  them  from  invasion,  allowing  them  to  rule  their  own 
subjects  according  to  customary  law. 

"The  principal  inducement,  however, ^to  the  greater  chieftains  to 
accept  the  King's  suzerainty,  was  the  alteration  in  the  tenure  of  the 
land.  Henry  insisted  on  the  old  fraud  ])ractised  by  the  Plantagenets 
of  recognising  the  feudal  laws  as  the  laws  of  the  country,  and  shutting 
his  eyes  to  the  Irish  system  of  tenure.  The  chief  surrendered  his  ter- 
ritory to  the  King,  and  the  King  regranted  it  to  him  to  hold  of  the 
Crown  by  knight's  service.  The  King  was  benefited  by  obtaining  a 
recognition  of  his  sovereign  rights,  and  the  invaluable  leverage  of  the 
law  of  forfeiture  for  treason  incident  to  the  English  tenure.  The 
chief  was  benefited  by  getting  a  grant  to  himself  and  his  heirs  of  the 
land,  which  never  was  his,  which  belonged  to  his  tribe,  and  of  which 
he  was  only  the  demesne  lord  for  life  by  virtue  of  the  will  of  the 
tribesmen.  The  arrangement  was  colourable  and  collusive,  and  in 
effect  confiscated  every  acre  in  the  island.  Though  the  practical 
effect  was  not  at  first  apparent,  the  foundation  was  laid  for  a  huge 
future  injustice."  f 

Thus  did  the  Irish  Chieftains  prove  faithless  to  their  trust.  They 
had  given  away,  unauthorized,  the  sacred  and  inalienable  patrimony 
of  the  Irish  people.  Each  of  the  new  Peers  or  Knights  had  bar- 
gained with  the  King  for  a  matter  over  which  neither  contracting 
party  had  a  shadow  of  right. 

The  Earl  of  Thomond  and  his  nephew.  Baron  Ibrackan,  and  the 
Earl  of  Clanrickard,  had  been  solemnly  invested  in  London,  by  the 
King  in  person,  Avith  the  insignia  of  their  new  dignity.     Meanwhile, 

*  Wright,  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  vol.  i.,  p.  365.         +  "  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p.  97. 


The  People  never  consented  to  the  Sale.  147 

the  Irish  people,  Avho  only  saw  in  all  these  pompous  displays  both  in 
Dublin  and  in  Loudon,  a  something  which  seemed  like  cringing  to 
the  Sassmach,  began  to  be  deeply  dissatisfied,  to  murmur,  and  to  agi- 
tate. On  their  return  from  England  the  new  Nobles  found  their 
tribesmen  in  revolt.  This  was  more  especially  the  case  in  Ulster, 
where  Con  O'Neill's  sons  headed  the  clansmen,  and  refused  to  ac- 
knowledge the  Earl  of  Tyrone  or  the  Baron  of  Dungannon.  It  was 
the  same  with  the  sons  of  O'Donnell.  They  and  their  people  would 
have  none  of  these  innovations. 

And  so  Lord  Deputy  Sentleger  had  to  march  an  army  into  the 
revolted  provinces  and  to  support  the  new  injustice  against  the  an- 
cient right. 

Thus,  in  the  reign  of  the  Eighth  Henry,  did  the  Irish  Chiefs 
themselves  conspire  with  the  King  to  confiscate  the  land  of  Ireland. 
But  to  this  confiscation,  unrighteous  and  unlawful  as  it  was,  the  Peo- 
ple of  Ireland,  the  Tribesmen  of  every  district,  the  sole  lawful  pro- 
prietors of  the  land,  not  only  never  gave  their  consent,  but  made  all 
the  resistance  in  their  power. 

Perhaps  it  was  providential  that  the  change  in  religion  came  in  at 
this  very  period,  to  prevent  the  immediate  consummation  of  this 
great  iniquity,  and  to  place  a  new  and  formidable  barrier  to  the  fusion 
of  the  two  races.  It  is  our  conviction,  that  had  Henry  remained 
true  to  the  Pope  and  saved  his  throne  and  his  kingdom  from  Prot- 
estantism, Ireland  must  have  become  subject  to  English  rule  and  law 
within  one  or  two  generations. 

The  Keformation,  coming  to  the  help  of  English  hatred  of  the 
Irish,  has  kept  them  a  distinct  race. 

3.  Edward  VI.   (15Jf7);  Mary  (1553-58). 

THE    SYSTEM   OF    "EXTERMINATION"   INAUGURATED. 

"Henry  VIII.,  had,  in  spite  of  the  Irish  counsel,  carried  out  his 
plan  of  conciliating  the  Irish  by  '  sober  ways,  politic  drifts,  and 
amiable  persuasions  of  law  and  reason,'  and  the  fruits  of  his  system 


148  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

promised  well  for  the  future.  Upon  liis  death  the  contrary  counsels 
prevailed:  it  was  believed  to  he  better  to  drive  the  Irish  than  to  lead 
them.  The  timorous  counsels  of  the  Dublin  oligarchy  could  look  for 
safety  only  in  harsh  and  cruel  measures,  and  little  by  little  a  course 
was  entered  upon  of  extekmixatioi^  and  plantation",  which  was 
pursued  for  two  centuries,  and  which,  when  combined  with  the  policy 
of  forcing  a  novel  form  of  faith  upon  a  reluctant  people,  has  imbued 
the  Irish  nation  with  a  hatred  of  the  English  government,  which 
bids  fair  to  be  ineffaceable  for  generations  to  come."* 

So  speaks  a  liberal  Englishman  in  our  own  days. 

As  hinted  in  the  foregoing  passage,  this  policy  of  exterminating 
the  native  Septs,  and  replacing  them  by  English  settlers,  was  the 
policy  of  the  Castle  Officials.  In  the  Privy  Council  the  Protestant 
Archbishops  played  a  predominant  part;  and  to  the  "land-hunger" 
which  had  ever  been  there  the  moving  force,  was  now  superadded 
religious  intolerance.  The  Irish  must  be  '^rooted  out"  not  merely 
because  they  are  Irish,  but  because  they  are  "Papists."  For  now 
this  odious  term  takes  its  place  in  the  English  language,  and  ex- 
presses the  two  fiercest  passions  of  the  human  breast  combined,  the 
hatred  of  religioii  and  the  hatred  of  race. 

The  first  theatre  chosen  for  the  crucial  experiment  of  "rooting 
out"  and  "planting,"  was  that  large  territory  embraced  within  the 
limits  of  Avhat  are  now  the  King's  and  Queen's  Counties.  This  was 
the  native  home  of  the  Septs  of  O'Moore,  O'Connor,  O'Dempsey, 
O'Dunn,  O'Molloy,  and  O'Carroll. 

When  the  lords  of  the  Privy  Council  wanted  an  insurrection  as  a 
preliminary  to,  and  a  pretext  for,  a  war  of  extermination,  they  were 
too  well  skilled  in  the  matter  to  have  to  wait  long  for  a  fitting  oppor- 
tunity. O'Connor  and  O'Moore,  taking  part  in  a  feud  between  the 
neighboring  Geraldines  and  the  English  of  the  Pale,  took  up  the 
cause  of  the  former,  invaded  Kildare,  burned  the  town  of  Athy,  a.nd 
slaughtered  many  of  the  inhabitants.     Here  was  the  opportunity. 

*  "  The  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p.  112. 


How  Mary  and  Philip  dealt  loitli  the  Irish.  149 

Sir  Edward  Bellingliam  was  forthwith  summoned  by  Seiitleger  to 
join  him  with  his  forces,  and  they  overran  together  the  districts  of 
Offaly  and  Leix,  driving  the  insurgents  into  Connaught.  Then  came 
into  operation  the  law  of  forfeiture.  Both  of  the  insurgent  chiefs 
had  signed  their  indenture  to  the  King.  They  were  by  Privy  Coun- 
cil proclaimed  traitors,  outlawed,  themselves  and  their  people  perse- 
cuted with  fire  and  sword,  and  all  their  lands  declared  forfeited  to  tlie 
Crown.  The  Dublin  Officials  never  cared  to  abide  by  the  slow  forms 
of  the  law  courts.  They  waited  for  no  investigation,  no  trial  by 
jury,  no  calm  decision  from  the  bench  of  justice.  They  were  them- 
selves lawmakers,  judges,  jury,  and  executioners.  They  struck  in- 
stead of  deliberating,  and  they  struck  with  no  merciful  hand. 

In  Leix  and  Offaly  "the  Irish  landholders  were  dispossessed  and 
driven  from  their  homes,  sometimes,  as  it  is  said,  with  circumstances 
of  great  cruelty,  and  strong  garrisons  were  placed  ...  to  keep  these 
countries,  which  Avere  now  added  to  the  English  Pale,  in  sub- 
jection."* 

This  is  a  very  mild  statement.  Mr.  Walpole  gives  it  more  truth- 
fully: "Eesistance,"  he  says,  "there  was  none;  O^Connor  and  O'Moore 
Avere  captured,  and  sent  over  as  prisoners  to  England;  the  strongholds 
of  Daugen  and  Campa  were  taken;  the  tribes  were  thrust  from  their 
homes  and  dispersed,  their  cattle  driven  off,  and  their  land  laid  waste. 
The  rightful  owners  of  the  soil  having  been  ejected,  the  next  step  was 
to  repeople  it  with  English  colonists.  This  was  accomplished,  and  a 
revenue  to  the  Crown  of  £500  per  annum  secured  by  the  granting  of 
leases  of  twenty-one  years  in  the  confiscated  lands  to  various  English 
colonists:  notably  to  Sir  Francis  Bryan,  who  had  married  the  Dow- 
ager Countess  of  Ormonde,  and  to  other  families  who  came  over  from 
England — the  Barringtons,  the  Crosbies,  the  Breretons,  and  the 
Hovendens,  the  Harpools,  the  Deavils,  the  Grahams,  the  Pigotts,  and 
the  Bowens. 

"For  nine  years  a  guerilla  warfare  was  kept  up  between  the  dis-  ' 

*  Wright,  "^Hist.  of  Ireland,"  vol.  i.,  p.  373. 


150  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

possessed  tribesmen  and  the  settlers,  of  a  most  fierce  and  bloody  char- 
acter, which  ended  in  the  almost  total  expulsion  of  the  latter.  Again 
the  Government  stepped  in,  and  this  time  proceeded  to  do  its  work 
more  thoroughly.  The  natives  were  either  shot  down  in  the  field,  or 
executed  by  martial  law,  and  the  remnant  driven  into  the  neighbor- 
ing bogs  and  mountains,  where  for  a  few  years  longer  they  preyed 
upon  and  spoiled  the  settlers,  and  in  their  turn  were  hunted  as 
brigands  and  put  to  death  as  outlaws.  The  confiscated  territories 
were  converted  into  '  shireland,'  the  greater  part  of  Oifaly,  Fercal, 
and  Ely,  being  denominated  King's  County,  .  .  .  while  Leix,  and  a 
portion  of  Offaly,  and  the  Barony  of  Upper  Ossory  became  Queen's 
County.  .  .  .  The  reinstated  settlers  (English  all)  were  called  upon 
to  adhere  to  the  English  language  and  habits,  to  subscribe  to  the  Eng- 
lish laws,  and  to  abjure  Irish  marriages  and  fosterage."* 

We  may  iippreciate  this  sole  benefit  bestowed  on  Ireland  by  the 
united  liberality  of  the  Catholic  Sovereigns  Mary  and  Philip,  when 
we  read  of  the  power  bestowed  on  the  Lord  Deputy,  the  Duke  of 
Sussex,  for  disposing  of  the  lands  of  Leix  and  Offaly:  "full  power  and 
authority  during  the  time  he  shall  be  Lord  Deputy  there,  to  give  and 
to  grant  to  all  and  every  their  Majesties'  subjects,  English  or  Irish, 
born  within  this  realm,  or  within  the  realm  of  England,  at  his  elec- 
tion and  pleasure,  such  several  estates  in  fee  simple,  fee  tail,  leases  for 
term  of  years,  life  or  lives,  of  all  and  every  the  lordships,  manors, 
castles,  patronages  of  benefices,  lands,  tenements,  and  all  other  hered- 
itaments temporal  loith  their  appurtoiances,  piarcel  of  any  of  the  said 
countries  of  right  appertaining  or  belonging,  as  for  the  more  sure 
planting  or  strength  of  the  countries  with  good  subjects  shall  he  thought 
unto  his  wisdom  and  discretion  meet  and  convenient.''^  f 

Thus  did  tliese  two  dispose  of  the  territory  out  of  which  they  had 
exterminated  the  Catholic  Irish,  their  co-religionists  and  subjects, 
with  a  ruthless  ferocity  worthy  of  Iroquois  savages.  What  right 
could  Irish  Papists  have  to  live  or  breathe  in  their  native  land? 

But  before  we  see  Elizabeth  pursuing  toward  these  Irish  the  same 
*  "  Kingdom  of  Ireland."  t  "  Irish  Statutes,"  i.  p.  240. 


WJio  and  what  are  the  People  thus  to  he  Exterminated?     151 

abominable  policy  inaugurated  by  lier  sister  Mary,  let  us  pause  a 
moment,  and  hear  a  contemporary  writer  describe  that  magnificent 
race,  who  were  thought  unworthy  of  having  a  foothold  within  the 
land  of  their  fathers. 

We  quote  from  no  less  a  personage  than  the  Lord  Deputy,  Sir 
Anthony  Sentleger  himself.  He  had  been  consulted  by  Henry 
VIII.  as  to  the  class  of  Irish  soldiers  he  should  send  to  his  army  in 
France.     Beginning  with  the  horsemen,  Sentleger  says: 

"In  case  your  Majesty  will  use  their  service  into  France,  your 
Highness  must  then  be  at  some  charges  with  them.  For  there  is  no 
horseman  of  this  land  but  he  hath  his  horse  and  his  two  boys  and 
two  hackneys,  or  one  hackney  and  two  chief  horses,  at  the  least, 
whose  wages  must  be  accordingly:  and  of  themselves  they  have  no 
riches  to  furnish  the  same.  And  assuredly  I  think  for  their  feats  of 
war,  which  is  for  light  scourers,  there  are  no  irroperer  horsemen  in 
Christian  ground,  7ior  more  hardy,  nor  yet  that  can  better  endure 
hardness.  ... 

"As  to  their  footmen,  they  have  one  sort,  which  be  harnessed  in 
mail  and  bassinets,  having  every  of  them  his  weapon,  called  a  sparre, 
much  like  the  axe  of  the  Tower,  and  they  be  named  Galloglasses; 
and  for  the  more  part  their  boys  bear  for  them  three  darts  apiece, 
which  darts  they  throw  before  they  come  to  the  hand  strife.  Tliese 
sort  of  men  he  those  that  do  not  lightly  abandon  the  field,  and  hear  the 
hntnt  to  the  death. 

"The  other  sort,  called  Keexe,  are  naked  {i.e.  unarmed)  men, 
except  only  their  shirts  and  small  coats;  and  many  times  when  they 
come  to  the  bicker  (fight),  but  barenaked,  saving  their  shirts  for 
decency;  and  these  have  darts  and  short  bowes;  which  sort  of  people 
be  both  hardy  and  deliver  (quick)  to  search  woods  and  marshes,  in 
which  they  be  hard  to  be  beaten.  And  if  your  Majesty  will  convert 
them  to  morespikes  and  hand-guns,  I  think  they  would,  in  that  feat, 
with  small  instructions,  do  your  Highness  great  ser\'ice;  for,  as  for 
gunners,  there  he  no  hetter  in  no  land  than  they  he,  for  the  number 
they  have.  .  .  . 


152  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

"  And  also  these  two  sorts  of  people  be  of  sucli  hardness,  that  there 
is  no  men  that  ever  I  saw,  that  will  or  can  endure  the  jm ins  and  evil 
fare  that  tliey  will  sustain;  for  in  the  summer,  when  corn  is  near 
ripe,  they  seek  no  other  meat  in  time  of  need,  but  to  storke  or  swyll 
(scorch  or  stew)  the  ears  of  wheat,  and  eat  the  same,  and  water  to 
their  drink;  and  with  this  they  pass  their  lives;  and  at  all  times  they 
eat  such  meat  as  few  otliers  could  live  with."  * 

"The  greater  part  of  the  thousand  Kernes  raised  for  the  King's 
service,  appear  (says  Wright)  to  have  been  carried  into  France,  where 
they  were  actively  employed  in  the  siege  of  Boulogne  in  the  Septem- 
ber of  1544.  There  they  are  said  to  have  astonished  everybody  by 
their  ferocity  (?)  as  well  as  by  their  bravery,  until,  if  we  believe  {and 
why  should  ive  not  f)  the  story  told  by  Stamhurst,  the  French  sent  a 
messenger  to  the  English  monarch  to  inquire  whether  they  were  men 
or  devils  whom  he  had  brought  against  them."  * 

The  civilized  world  needs  not  to  be  told  at  the  close,  almost,  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  what  are  the  soldierly  qualities  of  this  old 
Celtic  race.  But,  ere  we  see  these  glorious  materials  for  a  great 
nation  cast  aside  by  the  hand  of  English  statesmanship,  and  sub- 
jected to  a  process  aiming  at  grinding  them  into  the  mud  of  the 
street,  it  is  but  right  that  we  should  examine  more  closely  than  ever 
the  qualities  of  a  people,  who, /or  centuries,  are  to  be  treated  on  their 
own  native  soil,  as  if  they  were  incurable  savages,  creatures  fallen 
away  from  the  attributes  of  humanity,  without  the  intelligence,  the 
sentiment,  the  mind,  the  heart,  or  the  will  susceptible  of  culture, 
refinement,  or  the  benefits  of  civilization. 

And  here  it  is  that  their  enemies  should  bear  witness  once  more 
to  the  very  qualities  denied  them — in  practice,  at  least — by  Mary  and 
Elizabeth  Tudor,  by  the  Stuarts,  the  Commonwealth,  and  their 
successors. 

"AVe  are  not  to  wonder,"  says  Leland,  "that  a  people  accustomed 
to  the  refinements  found  in  their  own  laws,  should  be  pronounced  of 
all  others  the  greatest  lovers  of  justice." 

*  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  i.,  p.  363.  +  Ibidem. 


Revieiv  of  the  CTiaracter  of  the  Irish  Race.  153 

Never  was  it  so  needful  to  affirm  in  favor  of  the  people  of  Ireland, 
that  one  of  their  chief  characteristics  is  a  love  of  justice,  than  at  the 
present  day,  when  secular  injustice  and  the  accumulated  wrongs  of 
centuries  beget  in  the  Irish  peasant  a  fierce  resentment  that  oversteps 
or  overturns  all  barriers.  Legislative  injustice,  continued  through 
ages,  inspires  men  with  a  hatred  of  the  law  and  its  ministers;  the 
perversion  of  proprietary  right,  v/hich  persists  in  setting  property 
above  "and  before  life,  denying  practically  to  the  ancient  race  born  on 
the  soil  the  right  and  liberty  to  live  on  it,  to  find  a  shelter  on  it,  or 
to  draw  from  it  the  means  of  subsistence,— lias  challenged  the  atten- 
tion and  provoked  the  verdict  of  the  civilized  world.  .  .  But  who 
and  what  is  the  people  thus  condemned  to  starve  amid  tlie  inheri- 
tance of  their  fathers? 

Let  English  jurists  and  judges  answer.  "They  (the  native  Irish) 
would  gladly  continue  in  that  condition  (i.  e.,  of  subjects  to  the  Brit- 
ish Crown)  as  long  as  they  might  be  protected  and  justly  governed, 
without  oppression  on  the  one  hand,  or  impunity  on  the  other:  for 
there  is  no  nation  of  people  under  the  sun  that  doth  love  equal  and 
indiiferent  (impartial)  justice  better  than  tlie  Irish,  or  will  rest  better 
satisfied  Avith  the  execution  thereof,  although  it  be  against  them- 
selves, so  that  they  may  have  the  protection  and  benefit  of  the  law, 
when  upon  just  cause  they  do  desire  it."* 

Such  is  the  testimony  of  Sir  John  Davies.  It  is  the  simple  truth, 
re-echoed  by  a  Lord  Chief  Justice  of  England  in  words  which  deserve 
never  to  be  forgotten.  "Of  the  Kingdom  of  Ireland  I  have  been 
informed  by  many  that  have  had  judicial  places  there,  and  partly  of 
my  own  knowledge,  that  tliere  is  no  nation  in  the  Christian  ivorld 
that  are  greater  lovers  of  justice,  ....  tha?i  they  are,  which  virtue 
must  he  accompanied  hy  many  others."  \ 

How  does  the  national  character  of  the  Irish  race,  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  last  quarter  of  the  19th  century,  agree  with  that  which 


*  "  Historical  Tracts,"  p.  123,  Dublin,  1787. 
t  Cole's  "  Institutes,"  vol.  iv.,  p.  76. 


154  The  Cause  of  Ireland.    . 

history  has  transmitted  of  the  half-warlike,  half-pastoral,  and  learn- 
ing-loving Celts  of  1200  years  ago? 

Twelve  hundred  years  are  a  long  period  in  the  world's  history,  for 
moulding  and  remoulding  a  people,  for  changing  every  aspect  of 
their  national  life;  for  diverting  their  every  aim  and  energy  into  new 
channels;  for  totally  modifying  laws,  manners,  virtues,  and  institu- 
tions; for  bringing  into  language  itself  new  words  and  terms  expres- 
sive of  new  ideas  and  sentiments,  so  that  the  sj^eech  of  to-day  may  be 
straugely  and  utterly  in  dissonance  with  that  used  by  the  men  and 
women  of  a  thousand  years  before. 

And,  it  is  simply  stating  a  familiar  historical  fact  to  say,  that  of 
the  1200  years  just  mentioned,  1000  were  to  the  Irish  race  a  period 
of  such  terrible  and  uninterrupted  trial,  as  no  nation,  no  people 
known  to  history  ever  had  to  endure.  How  have  the  Irish  come 
out  of  it  ? 

As  these  words  are  being  written  the  Irish  people,  recovering 
from  the  last  famine  of  1880,  are  struggling  resolutely  to  wrest  from 
the  British  Parliament  such  legislation  as  Avill  free  both  tenant  and 
farm-laborer  from  the  constant  fear  of  cruel  eviction  and  starvation 
on  this  land  of  their  forefathers.  Hitherto  land-law  has  been 
supreme  over  life.  The  struggle  is  still  on  most  points  of  the  Irish 
soil,  to  prevent  life  from  being  ruthlessly  sacrificed  to  law;  to  give  to 
the  occupiers  and  cultivators  of  the  soil  not  only  the  right  to  live  on 
its  produce,  but  that  of  claiming  as  their  own  the  liberty  to  improve 
their  holdings,  the  right  to  own  such  improvements,  and  the  security 
against  sudden  and  arbitrary  eviction.  Of  such  evictions,  executed 
with  circumstances  of  incomprehensible  cruelty,  many,  too  many  are 
taking  place  every  week,  every  day.  In  one  instance,  300  persons 
are  put  out  on  the  road,  and  there  left  shelterless,  to  starve,  to 
perish  in  the  rain  and  cold.  Is  it  wonderful  that,  following  fast  on 
such  high-handed  acts  of  authority,  of  inhumanity  rather,  we  hear  of 
^'agrarian  outrages,"  of  agents  or  landlords  murdered  or  shot  at? 

When,  in  a  Christian  countiy,  the  fundamental  laws  of  justice  and 
Christian  policy  have  been  perverted  by  a  dominant  and  alien  class, 


Eeview  of  the  Character  of  the  Irish  Race.  155 

and  only  administered  for  the  destruction  and  oppression  of  the 
ancient  native  race, — would  it  not  be  wonderful  if  outraged  human 
nature,  driven  continually  to  the  wall,  did  not  turn  on  the  wrong- 
doer and  oppressor,  and,  in  sheer  self-defence,  take  life  for  life? 
When  law  and  the  administration  of  Justice  have  been  made  for 
centuries  the  instruments  of  the  most  odious  passions  and  prejudices 
of  race,  caste,  and  religion,  it  would  be  strange  indeed  if  the  down- 
trodden should  look  with  any  other  feehng  than  that  of  fiercest 
hatred  on  the  law  and  the  men  who  execute  it,  and  on  the  law- 
making and  land-holding  class,  in  whose  favor  it  is  enforced  ? 

No  !  the  fearful  acts  of  retaliation  we  have  heard  of  all  through 
these  years,  do  not  detract  from  the  national  love  of  Justice  which 
pre-eminently  distinguished  the  Irish  people  even  in  the  dreadful  age 
of  Elizabeth.  The  keener  the  sense  of  Justice  and  right  in  a  warm- 
hearted, generous,  and  quick-witted  race,  the  more  intolerable  be- 
comes to  them  the  feeling  of  the  deepest  wrong, — especially  when 
the  wrong-doer  in  his  might  avows  his  determination  to  perpetuate 
the  evil. 

Nor  do  these  extremities  of  violence  detract  from  the  natural  gen- 
tleness which  belongs  to  the  Irish  temperament, — any  more  than  the 
cries,  the  imprecations,  the  contortions  of  the  meekest  of  men  sub- 
jected to  protracted  torture. 

Of  the  secret  associations  which  sprang  up  in  succession  all  over 
the  Island,  opposing  red-handed  violence  to  the  exterminating  policy 
of  the  landed  proprietors,  and  seeking,  too  often  by  murder,  to  force 
the  Government  and  the  Courts  of  Justice  to  acknowledge  the  right 
of  the  tenant  and  the  farm-laborer  to  subsist  on  their  native  soil, — 
only  one  word  need  be  said  at  present.  They  were  the  natural  and 
legitimate  offspring  of  a  state  of  things  enduring  for  centuries,  and  in 
which  Might  alone  was  Eight.  Irishmen  were  treated  as  if  they  had 
no  riglits  in  Ireland:  when  the  crisis  of  this  monstrous  system  of 
injustice  came,  and  both  tenant-farmers  and  farm-laborers  beheld  the 
roofs  which  had  sheltered  themselves,  their  children,  and  their  fore- 
fathers torn  down  and  the  walls  leveled  to  the  earth,  they  were  driven 


156  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

by  despair  to  create  a  mysterious  and  dreadful  Power,  that  could 
withstand  the  Might  of  the  wrongdoer  and  oppressor. 

These  organizations  should  be  considered  as  the  lawful  offspring 
of  wrong  perpetuated  and  reaching  its  very  extremity,  rather  than  as 
the  natural  manifestation  of  the  oppressed  people's  disposition  or 
temper. 

We  can,  therefore,  continue  our  study  of  the  admirable  national 
character  of  the  Irish  People,  convinced  that  these  clouds,  which 
seemingly  darken  its  brightness,  no  more  touch  its  substantial  reality 
than  the  shadows  in  our  atmosphere  reach  the  orb  of  the  sun. 

The  writer  of  these  lines,  after  fifty-three  years  spent  outside  of 
Ireland,  in  almost  continual  contact  with  men  of  Irish  birth  or  par- 
entage, as  pastor  and  teacher,  has,  surely,  had  some  knowledge  of 
both  the  qualities  and  the  defects  of  his  exiled  countrymen.  Eeturn- 
ing  to  Ireland  with  this  acquired  experience,  he  has  sought  to  com- 
pare and  complete  this  knowledge  of  their  character  with  what 
attentive  study  reveals  of  Irish  life  at  home,  in  every  class  of  society. 
"What  has  been  'the  result  of  these  observations  ? 

In  the  cities  and  back-wood  settlements  of  Canada,  as  well  as  on 
every  point  of  the  grteat  neighboring  Republic,  visited  by  him,  his 
professional  duties  have  afforded  him  the  best  opportunities  of  seeing 
Irish  human  nature  without  veil  or  mask;  and  he  has  had  no  reason 
to  blush  for  the  race  from  which  lie  is  sprung.  He  has  labored,  in 
1847-48,  among  the  famine  and  fever-stricken  multitudes  sent  from 
Ireland  to  perish  at  Grosse-Isle  and  along  both  shores  of  the  St.  Law- 
rence, and,  with  the  dead  around  him  and  death  threatening  himself 
as  it  had  stricken  down  so  many  of  his  brother-priests,  he  declares 
now,  as  he  solemnly  declared  then  and  since:  That  the  virtues  which 
shone  forth  in  these  victims  of  British  misrule  in  Ireland,  were  such 
as  are  recorded  of  no  other  people  since  the  birth  of  Christendom. 

More  than  that,  and  searching  his  own  memory  for  the  names  of 
peoples,  before  the  Christian  Era,  distinguished  for  great  fortitude 
under  a  succession  of  unmerited  and  crushing  calamities,  he  can 
recall  no  race  mentioned  in  all  history  Avhom  Fortune  has  pursued  so 


Eeview  of  the  Character  of  the  Irish  Race.  157 

pitilessly,  so  persistently,  and  whose  soul,  like  pui-e  gold  tried  by  the 
quenchless  flame,  has  only  come  forth  from  the  ordeal  brighter  and 
more  pure.  The  fierce  fury  of  anti-national  hate  and  religious  big- 
otry, like  the  mighty  forces  of  electro-magnetism  concentrated  to 
destroy,  fuse,  vaporize  the  pure  gold  itself,  seemed  to  have  triumphed 
at  length,  and  annihilated  these  detested  Irish.  But  if  the  golden 
jewel  presented  at  one  pole,  did  indeed  disappear  from  the  eye,  the 
gold  itself  was  found  in  one  solid  mass  at  the  other  pole.  Not  one 
particle  had  been  lost;  nothing  had  perished  but  the  baser  metals 
mixed  with  the  gold  by  the  hand  of  the  jeweler,  and  the  accidental 
form  given  to  the  precious  material.  This,  still  further  separated 
from  all  dross,  was  now  ready  to  receive  a  new  and  diviner  form  from 
the  Supreme  of  Artists. 

How  often,  in  my  missionary  excursions,  have  I  not  come  upon 
these  infant  Irish  settlements  amid  the  primeval  forests,  in  which 
even  the  most  laborious  had  been  only  able  to  build  themselves  and 
their  families  log  cabins,  surrounded  by  a  few  acres  of  cleared  and 
cultivated  land.  There  they  would  give  to  the  Priest  of  their  Faith 
a  welcome  as  right  royal  as  if  he  were  a  King,  and  with  manners  and 
phrase  as  courtly  as  if  they  were  princes  every  one  of  them.  No 
queen  in  her  drawing-room  could  greet  her  lieges  with  more  ease  and 
dignity  and  unstudied  grace,  than  these  wives  of  the  backwoodsmen 
of  the  United  States  and  the  Canadas.  I  have  listened  to  their  con- 
versations, when  they  fancied  no  ear  was  listening;  and  I  have  been 
filled  with  amazement  at  the  refinement  of  their  language,  the  noble- 
ness of  their  sentiments,  the  sagacity  of  their  judgments  even  on  pub- 
lic affairs  and  political  parties;  at  the  brilliant  fancy  and  quick  play 
of  wit  and  hnmor  with  which  they  can  enliven  any  topic  of  conversa- 
tion or  discussion.  These  seemed  to  be  the  gifts  of  all,  though  prac- 
ticed conspicuously  by  a  leading  few.  But  wit  and  humor,  to  pro- 
voke repartee  and  jest,  to  awaken  laughter  and  general  merriment  in 
a  large  circle,  are  like  latent  electricities,  which  spring  into  life  at  the 
first  play  of  a  skilled  hand,  sparkling  and  lighting  up  the  darkness, 
and  giving  to  silence  the  soul  of  mirth  and  enjoyment. 


158  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Many  a  time  have  I  heard  persons  of  other  nationalities,  even 
when  bitterly  prejudiced  against  the  Irish,  ask  me,  after  visiting  the 
poor  dwellings  of  these  laborers  and  colonists,  Where  these  people 
had  learned  their  exquisite  phraseology,  and  found  such  refined  and 
noble  sentiments  ? 

Had  I  never  been  able,  during  my  fifty-three  years  of  absence  from 
my  native  land,  to  reconcile  the  contradiction  between  a  hovel  and 
the  courtly  manners  of  its  occupants,  to  point  out  the  source  from 
which  the  Irish  peasant  or  laborer  derives  his  refinement  and  his  wit, 
— a  few  months  in  Ireland,  spent  in  conversing  with  the  poor  people 
themselves,  would  have  removed  every  doubt  from  my  mind, 
and  given  me  a  triumphant  answer  for  every  question  asked 
me. 

Americans  talk  among  themselves,  laughingly,  of  what  they  term 
the  harmless  delusion  of  Irish  sei'ving  men  and  women,  wdio  would 
pass  themselves  off  as  descendants  of  Celtic  Kings  or  Princes.  There 
is  some  ground  for  the  delusion,  however.  The  mass  of  the  Irish 
agricultural  population  are  indeed  descended  from  the  former  pro- 
prietors and  lords  of  the  soil.  History  has  abundant  proofs  of  this. 
In  another  part  of  this  book  we  give  authentic  details  of  the  violent 
and  unjustifiable  spoliation  of  the  native  Irish  race  in  favor  of  all  for- 
eigners who  would  "undertake"  to  hold  the  land,  and  exterminate 
from  it  the  Irish  and  Popery. 

A  century  ago  this  was  the  purpose  of  all  English  legislation  and 
government  in  Ireland.  The  force  of  public  opinion  has  modified 
the  spirit  of  English  Statesmen  and  Ministers.  Has  the  spirit  of  the 
English  landlords,  to  Avhoni  the  sword  of  Strongbow,  of  Henry  VIIL, 
of  Elizabeth,  and  Oliver  Cromwell  gave  up  Ireland  as  a  mine  to  work, 
exhaust,  and  then  abandon,  been  mollified  by  the  change  in  public 
opinion  ?  or  been  taught  to  look  upon  the  Irish  Papist  in  any  other 
light  than  that  of  a  natural  enemy  to  be  destroyed,  or  a  Helot  to  be 
kept  in  perpetual  bondage  and  irredeemable  inferiority? 

Let  that  man  answer,  who  having  spent  a  year,  or  even  six  months 
in  studying  the  country,  its  classes,  and  the  various  currents  of  social 


Eeview  of  the  Character  of  the  Irish  Race.  159 

thought  and  sentiment,  will  have  made  himself  competent  to  give  an 
enlightened  judgment  on  the  Irish  Question. 

You  cannot  go  into  the  outskirts  of  a  single  city,  into  a  town,  vil- 
lage, or  hamlet,  in  which  you  will  not  meet  with  families  compelled 
by  sheer  and  dire  necessity, — not  by  any  fault  of  their  own, — to  live 
in  dwellings  unfit  to  be  a  dog-kennel.  In  these  squalid  abodes  the 
only  articles  of  furniture  are  often  found  to  be  a  bedstead,  chairs, 
and  table  of  mahogany,  oak,  or  cherry-wood,  of  rare  design  and  good 
workmanship.  When  questioned,  how  they  have  come  by  these  arti- 
cles, so  utterly  out  of  harmony  with  their  other  surroundings,  these 
poor  creatures  will  tell  you,  that  these  w^ere  bridal-gifts  expressly 
made  and  bestowed  on  themselves  by  their  deceased  parents,  or  on 
the  latter  by  their  dear  fathers  and  mothers:  to  these  they  have 
clung,  while  everything  else  has  gone  for  rent  to  the  landlord,  or  for 
the  bare  necessaries  of  life  to  the  auctioneer  or  pawnbroker. 

Everywhere,  as  you  travel  through  town  and  country,  you  meet 
with  the  evidences  of  this  descent  from  affluence,  or  competence,  to 
what  seems  hopeless  poverty.  You  are  ever  in  presence  of  a  race, 
who  cherish  fondly  the  memory  of  better  days,  of  a  higher  social  po- 
sition, of  civil  spoliation  and  degradation  consummated  \n  hatred  of 
the  faith  they  professed  and  the  race  to  which  they  belonged. 

In  only  one  province, — that  of  Connaught, — has  a  more  fearful 
accumulation  of  ills,  ploughing  its  way  slowly  through  every  class 
of  society,  with  the  irresistible  force  of  the  Unterwald  Glacier,  suc- 
ceeded in  making  on  the  souls  of  the  people,  or  a  large  portion  of 
them,  deep  and  degrading  impressions.  Even  in  our  Western  States, 
our  Irish  Bishops  have  observed  with  pain,  that  the  poor  Connaught 
colonists  had  contracted  certain  habits  of  secretiveness,  and  untruth- 
fulness. In  the  free  land  of  America,  and  surrounded  with  none  but 
friends,  some  of  these  poor  settlers  reminded  one  of  birds,  who  having 
seen  their  nests  again  and  again  destroyed  or  spoiled  by  a  cruel  hand, 
will  no  longer  build  in  the  open,  but  seek  to  make  their  home  and 
rear  their  brood  in  the  remotest  corner  of  the  wilderness.  The  con- 
duct of  these  poor  settlers  has  somewhat  of  the  cunning  of  certain 


160  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

birds  of  the  partridge  tribe.  If  you  come  upon  the  parent  while  it  is 
still  nestling,  it  will  run  swiftly  before  you,  or  stumble  and  roll  over 
as  if  it  were  wounded  and  its  W'ing  broken,  and  thus  mislead 
you  in  pursuit,  till  far  enough  away  from  the  nest  to  warrant  its 
security. 

Alas,  poor  people!  What  weapons  have  the  long-oppressed,  the 
oft-despoiled  and  plundered,  the  defenceless  victims  of  Might  without 
conscience  and  without  pity,  than  fawning  and  servility,  than  deceit- 
ful Avords,  dark  ways,  and  manners  which  make  true  manhood  blush  ? 
Blame  we  not  them; — their  excuse  is  easily  found  in  the  long  and 
desperate  struggle  for  bare  existence.  Let  us  lay  the  sin  and  the 
shame  on  the  only  true  authors  of  this  degradation  of  a  noble  nature; 
on  the  unmanly  men,  the  titled  landlords  of  Connaught,  who  refuse 
even  to  the  wretched  Islanders  of  Arran,  the  ownership  of  the  sea- 
weed fished  at  the  base  of  the  precipitous  cliffs  of  their  native  isles. 
In  every  country  under  the  sun,  boasting  the  name  of  civilized, — save 
in  Irelpaid  alone, — the  man  who  claims  to  be  the  owner  of  the  land, 
will  build  for  the  farmer  who  cultivates  it  and  makes  it  fruitful,  not 
only  a  comfortable  and  durable  habitation,  but  outhouses  to  garner 
the  grain,  to  shelter  cattle  and  flocks;  he  will  fence  it  round  to  divide 
it  from  the  neighboring  farms,  construct  drains  through  it,  dig  wells 
to  provide  man  and  beast  with  wholesome  water,  help  and  encourage 
the  tiller  of  the  soil  to  make  the  barren  places  fertile,  the  bountiful 
fields  more  bountiful  still.  He  will  set  a  premium  on  skill  and  in- 
dustry and  energy  which  ever  works  to  improve  all  around  it. 

But  how  is  it  in  Connaught  ?  We  need  only  allude  here  to  what 
astonished  Europe  and  indignant  America  daily  learn  through  the 
press  of  England  of  incredible  stories  of  wrong  brought  before  the 
law-courts, — and  which,  alas,  the  laws  of  Ireland  are  powerless  to 
remedy. 

Do  we  wonder  that  the  Connaught  farmer  cannot  or  will  not  im- 
prove ?  or  that  when  he  ventures  on  a  few  timid  ameliorations  in  his 
farmstead  or  his  narrow  plot, — he  is  as  anxious  to  conceal  them  from 
the  eye  of  the  landlord,  as  if  each  additional  turnip,  or  head  of  cab- 


Review  of  the  C'liaracter  of  the  IrUh  Race.  161 

bage,  or  bushel  of  potatoes,  were  a  something  obtained  by  dishonesty, 
and  which  must  be  kept  out  of  sight  ? 

We  know  that  the  continuous  action  of  rain  and  wind  will,  with 
the  lapse  of  time,  wear  away  the  surface  of  the  hardest  granite.  I 
have  just  seen  and  examined,  within  the  close  of  St.  Bridget's  great 
Monastery  at  Kildare,  the  great  mutilated  medieval  cross  which 
once,  doubtless,  stood  amid  the  cloister,  and  around  which  so  many 
generations  reverently  knelt  while  commemorating  the  mysteries  of 
Eedemption.  Sacrilegious  hands  tore  it  away  from  its  massive  base 
at  some  distance,  broke  off  the  upper  extremity  of  the  cross  propei' 
with  its  circular  nimbus,  and  planted  it  in  an  obscure  corner  of  the 
enclosure.  Shaft,  remnant  of  cross,  and  the  massive  base  itself,  are 
honeycombed  by  the  elemental  friction.  The  day  will  come,^ — no 
distant  day,  let  us  hope, — when  the  noble  monolith  will  be  replaced 
in  its  primitive  position,  and  the  crumbling  stone  encased  in  some 
more  precious  material,  and  the  cross  above  completed  and  adorned 
by  the  loving  hand  of  Irish  art. 

And  are  not  some  of  the  features  of  a  nation's  character  susceptible 
of  being  thus  modified  or  even  utterly  destroyed  in  the  course  of  time 
and  by  the  slow  but  sure  action  of  the  elements  ?  How  many  nations 
have  disappeared  in  the  lapse  of  centuries?  how  many  others  have 
merged  their  characteristics  in  those  of  a  dominant  race  ? 

But  the  national  physiognomy  of  the  Irish  race  is  like  that 
gigantic,  wonderful,  and  mysterious  creature,  whose  humian  counte- 
nance towers  above  the  sands  of  the  desert  at  the  foot  of  the  great 
Egyptian  Pyramids.  From  afar  its  aspect  fascinates  the  beholder. 
One  only  discerns  at  a  near  approach  the  injuries  wrought  on  these 
majestic  features  by  wind,  and  rain,  and  the  hand  of  barbarous  man. 
These  are,  after  all,  but  trifling.  And  the  pilgrim  as  he  gazes  from 
a  distance  on  these  unwearied  eyes,  keeping  watch  over  the  graves 
and  monuments  of  the  mightiest  and  most  ancient  of  empires,  fancies 
that  there  is  an  immortal  soul  in  the  chiseled  rock,  looking  into 
futurity  and  calling  the  eternal  ages  its  own. 

So  is  it  with  the  Ireland  of  the  19th  century :  she  has  not 
11 


162  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

changed  in  lier  faith,  her  undying  hope,  and  all  those  divine  chari- 
ties deposited  in  her  soul  by  St.  Patrick's  bajotism.  All  the  noble 
virtues  of  the  old  pagan  race  were  purified,  elevated,  and  made  inde- 
structible by  the  grace  of  the  redeeming  Blood.  The  national  soul, 
as  the  new  era  of  freedom  and  justice  dawns  upon  Ireland,  looks  for- 
ward with  exultation,  confident  in  the  promises  of  a  divine  mission 
and  a  glorious  career. 

One  last  testimony  from  a  friend, — the  illustrious  Bishop  of 
Orleans,  whose  voice  was  ever  raised  to  defend  all  noble  causes,  will 
close  this  defense  of  the  Irish  character. 

"What  shall  I  say  of  the  Irish  race,  of  its  high  origin,  of  its 
antiquity  ?  .  .  .  .  It  is  evident  that  the  races  of  the  north  and  of  the 
south  mingled  here  their  blood  and  their  different  qualities  to  form  a 
distinct  people:  expansive  ardor  and  patient  tenacity,  fertile  imagi- 
nation and  unbending  courage,  truthfulness  and  constanc}^,  love  of 
solitude  and  a  passion  for  noble  adventures.  .  .  .  They  have  pre- 
served, as  we  have,  that  sort  of  everlasting  youth,  that  generous 
enthusiasm,  which  takes  such  pleasure  in  the  memory  of  the  past, 
and  in  the  aspirations  toward  the  future,  more  than  in  the  realities  of 
the  present.  They  have  preserved  nobility  of  sentiment;  and  nobility 
of  sentiment,  with  piety  of  heart,  is  the  finest  flower  of  the  soul.  A 
people  religious  and  ardent,  monastic  and  warlike,  missionary  and 
civilizing; — and,  when  Faith  demanded  that  mighty  testimony  of  love, 
a  people  of  martyrs.  Never  more  grand,  according  to  the  strong 
expression  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures,  than  in  that  long  death,  or, 
rather,  that  life  ever  verging  on  death,  ever  resisting  :  Grandis 
interihc  (Ezechiel  xxii.  6). 

4.  Elizabeth. 

Under  Mary,  whatever  she  may  have  done  to  injure  the  Irish  race 
in  Ireland,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  she  did  much  and  left  a  pernicious 
precedent  to  after  times;  or  how  powerless  soever  she  may  have  felt 
herself  to  do  good, — she  deserves  at  least  this  praise,  so  far  as  Ireland 


Acts  of  Uiviformity  and  Supremacy.  163 

is  concerned,  that  she  did  not  shed  there  a  single  drop  of  blood  for 
conscience'  sake. 

"There  was  no  persecution  on  account  of  the  new  faith  (says  jMr. 
AYalpole),  for  the  simple  reason  that  there  had  been  no  converts. 
Those  who  filled  the  State  offices  had  easy  consciences,  and  took  tlieir 
religion  from  the  Crown.  The  great  Earl  of  Ormonde  conformed 
with  the  rest. 

"Elizabeth's  first  act  in  Ireland  was  to  reverse  all  that  her  sister 
had  done  in  church  matters.  .  .  .  She  directed  a  Parliament  to  be 
summoned  on  Jan,  11,  1560,  and  care  was  taken  that  its  composition 
should  be  of  a  satisfactory  character.  .  .  .  This  deliberately  packed 
body  repealed  the  Acts  of  Philip  and  Mary  relating  to  the  Pope's 
jurisdiction,  and  passed  the  Act  of  Uniformity  as  it  stood  on  the 
English  statute-book,  ordering  all  persons  under  pain  of  fine  and  im- 
prisonment, to  attend  church  and  hear  the  new  liturgy.  ...  A  new 
oath  of  supremacy  w^as  also  imposed,  to  be  taken  by  all  persons,  on 
pain  of  forfeiture  of  office  and  promotion  during  life."* 

We  mention  these  facts,  and  quote  the  passage  relating  to  the 
"deliberately  packed  Parliament,"  the  Act  of  Uniformity,  and  that 
imposing  the  Oath  of  Supremacy,  because  all  these  are  henceforward 
to  be  made  potent  and  ever-ready  instruments  of  proscription  and 
confiscation. 

"Within  the  English  Pale,"  continues  Mr.  Walpole,  "English 
ministers,  professing  the  reformed  faith  and  wholly  ignorant  of  the 
Irish  language,  were  largely  intruded,  with  the  consequence  that 
their  congregations  refused  to  attend  church.  It  is  not  surprising 
that  the  mass  of  the  people  were  driven  into  the  arms  of  the  begging 
friars,  who  preached  the  ancient  faith  in  the  native  tongue  upon  the 
bare  hillsides,  and  enjoined  an  undying  hatred  of  the  Anglicizing 
Church  of  the  Establishment."  f 

Oh!  the  weary,  blood-stained  road  that  the  Irish  race  have  to 
travel  down  the  long  centuries  from  that  memorable  year  1560  ! 

*  "  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p.  109.  t  Ibidem,  p.  111. 


164  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

We  pass  over  an  interval  of  nine  years.  The  cliief  events  in 
Ireland  during  that  interval,  are  those  connected  with  the  brave  and 
ill-fated  Shane  O'i^eill,  for  whose  life  the  Queen  as  well  as  her  Lords 
Deputies  did  not  blush  to  lay  snares  abhorrent  to  honor  and  civ- 
ilization. 

It  is  important  to  consider  that  the  Irish  nation  had  not  sanc- 
tioned the  submission  of  Con  O'Xeill,  Shane's  father,  to  Henry  VIII. ; 
and  still  less  liad  they  acquiesced  in  any  of  the  indentures  or  contracts 
by  wdiicli  the  native  chiefs  had  made  over  to  the  Crown  the  lands  of 
their  respective  Septs.  The  sons  of  the  O'Neill,  like  the  sons  of  The 
O'Donnell,  had  rebelled  against  their  parents  on  the  return  of  these 
from  London,  and  were  sustained  enthusiastically  in  their  revolt  by 
the  tribesmen. 

Shane  O'JS'eill,  on  his  father's  death,  assumed  the  title  of  The 
O'Neill,  and  was  solemnly  inaugurated  into  tlie  cliieftaincy  in  the 
accustomed  place  and  with  the  solemn  traditional  ceremonies  used 
from  time  immemorial.  This  plainly  told  the  English  Government 
that  he  owed  them  no  allegiance.  Then  ensued  a  series  of  wars  in 
which,  had  the  Irish  Septs  and  their  Chiefs  given  united  and  hearty 
support  to  O'Neill,  they  might  all  together  have  dictated  their  own 
terms  even  to  Elizabeth.  Let  us  see  what  means  she  employed,  when 
the  fortune  of  arms  failed  her,  to  bring  her  Irish  enemy  to  her  feet. 

The  truth  here  is  of  no  little  moment  to  the  Cause  of  Ireland. 
We  quote  from  Sir  John  Pope  Ilennessy. 

EUzabetNs  Complicity  in  Assassination  Plots. 
"  The  manuscripts  calendared  in  onr  time  by  the  Rolls  office  ter- 
minate a  controversy  raised  by  John  O'lSTeill,  tlie  great  chief  of 
Ulster,  three  hundred  years  ago.  When  Sir  Henry  Sidney  invited 
liim  to  an  interview  Avithin  the  Pale,  the  answer  was  that  '  he  had 
much  affection  for  Sir  Henry,  but  that  the  Deputy's  predecessor,  the 
Earl  of  Sussex,  had  twice  attempted  to  assassinate  him.  That  after 
such  experience  his  timorous  Irish  would  not  trust  him  any  more  in 
English  hands.'    Up  to  a  recent  period  historians  denounced  this  as 


Elizabeth's  Complicity  in  Assassination  Plots.  165 

a  'foul  libel  upon  the  blunt  and  honest  Sussex.'  The  national  tradi- 
tions, however,  had  always  supported  O'Neill's  charges.  It  was  a  ques- 
tion of  the  belief  of  the  long-memoried  people  on  the  one  side,  and  the 
incredulity  of  ill-informed  writers  on  the  other.  But  now  this  contro- 
versy is  at  an  end.  Mr.  Froude  himself  has  given  the  conclusive 
evidence  to  the  world.  In  a  letter  from  the  Earl  of  Sussex  to  Queen 
Elizabeth,  written  from  Ardbrachan  on  the  24th  of  August,  15G1,  he 
describes  the  arrival  of  two  messengers  from  the  camp  of  the  victori- 
ous Irish  chief,  one  of  whom,  named  Grey,  he  proceeded  to  bribe. 

"  '  I  swore  him  upon  the  Bible,'  writes  the  Lord  Deputy,  'to  keep 
secret  that  I  should  say  unto  him,  and  assured  him,  if  it  were  known 
during  the  time  I  had  the  government  there,  that  besides  the  breach 
of  his  oath  it  should  cost  him  his  life.  I  used  long  circumstance  in 
persuading  him  to  serve  your  Highness,  to  benefit  his  country,  and 
to  procure  assistance  of  living  to  him  and  his  for  ever  by  doing  of 
that  which  he  might  easily  do.  He  promised  to  do  what  I  would. 
In  fine  I  brake  with  him  to  kill  Shane  O'Neill:  and  bound  myself  by 
an  oath  to  see  him  have  a  hundred  marks  of  land  by  the  year  to  him 
and  to  his  heirs  for  his  reward.  He  seemed  desirous  to  serve  your 
Highness  and  to  have  the  land,  but  fearful  to  do  it,  doubting  his  own 
escape  after  with  safety,  which  he  confessed  and  promised  to  do  by 
any  means  he  might  escaping  with  his  life.' 

"  Having  quoted  this  despatch,  Mr.  Froude  says:  '  Elizabeth's 
answer — if  she  sent  any  answer — is  not  discoverable.  It  is  most 
sadly  certain,  however,  that  Sussex  was  continued  in  office.'  .  .  .  Two 
years  after  this  the  English  troops  were  again  routed.  A  treaty  of 
peace  was  accordingly  made.  'Indentures  were  drawn,'  says  Mr. 
Froude,  'on  the  17th  of  December,  1563,  in  which  the  Ulster  sov- 
ereignty was  transferred  to  O'Neill  in  everything  but  the  name;  and 
a  treaty — such  treaty  as  it  was — required  only  Elizabeth's  signa- 
ture, when  a  second  dark  effort  was  made  to  cut  the  knot  of  the 
Irish  difficulty.  As  a  first  evidence  of  returning  cordiality  a  present 
of  wine  was  sent  to  Shane  O'Neill  from  Dublin.  It  was  consumed  at 
his  table,  but  the  poison  had  been  unskilfully  prepared.     It  brought 


166  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

him  aud  half  -his  household  to  the  edge  of  death,  but  no  oue  actually 
died.  The  guilt  could  not  be  fixed  on  Sussex.  The  crime  was 
traced  to  an  English  resident  in  Dublin  named  Smith;  and  if  Sussex 
had  been  the  instigator,  his  instrument  was  too  faithful  to  betray 
him.'  Smith  put  upon  his  trial,  '  confessed  his  guilt,  took  the  entire 
responsibiUty  upon  himself,  and  declared  that  his  object  was  to  rid 
his  country  of  a  dangerous  enemy.'     He  was  convicted,  but  got  off 

WITHOUT  PUXISHMEXT. 

'"'  Mr.  Fronde  thinks  the  treachery  of  the  Lord  Deputy,  the  con- 
duct of  the  inquiry,  and  the  anomalous  termination  of  it,  would  have 
been  incredible  had  not  the  original  correspondence,  in  which  the 
facts  are  not  denied,  been  now  before  us.  Referring  to  the  Queen's 
answer  to  John  O'Xeill's  remonstrance  against  being  thus  practised 
upon,  Mr.  Froude  says:  'After  the  repeated  acts  of  treachery  which 
had  been  at  least  meditated  towards  O'Xeill  with  Elizabeth's  knowl- 
edge, she  was  scarcely  justified  in  assuming  a  tone  of  innocent  anger.' 

"Ealegh  knew  all  tbis.  He  knew  also  that  Sir  Henry  Sidney  had 
finally  succeeded  where  Sussex  had  failed,  and  that  he  succeeded  by 
employing  a  friend  and  companion  of  Ealegh.  Dr.  Taylor  describes 
how  the  Irish  chief  proceeded  to  the  camp  of  the  Hebridean  Scots. 
'  But ' — lie  goes  on  to  say — '  an  emissary  of  the  Government  had  pre- 
ceded liim.  Piers,  a  British  officer,  a  disgrace  to  his  country  and  his 
profession,  had  undertaken  the  task  of  persuading  the  Scottish  chief 
to  murder  his  unsuspecting  guest.  At  a  given  signal,  the  banquet- 
ing-room  was  filled  with  soldiers,  and  all  the  Irish  were  slain. 
O'Xeill's  head  was  sent  to  Dublin,  and  Piers  received  a  thousand 
marks  from  the  Government  as  a  reward  for  the  murder.'  Hooker 
tells  us  that  the  head  was  carried  to  the  Lord  Deputy  '  by  Captain 
Piers,  by  whose  device  the  stratagem,  or  rather  tragedie,  was  prac- 
tised.' Mr.  Froude,  while  admitting  that  O'Xeill  and  his  friends  in 
the  banqueting- hall  were  murdered,  says  but  little  of  Captain  Piers' 
conduct.  *  Four  days  later,*  he  tells  us,  '  Piers  hacked  the  head  from 
the  body  and  carried  it  on  a  spear's  point  through  Drogheda  to  Dub- 
lin, where,  staked  upon  a  pike,  it  bleached  on  the  battlements  of  the 


Elizabeth's  Complicity  in  Assassinatioti  Plots.  167 

Castle,  a  symbol  to  the  Irish  world  of  the  fate  of  Celtic  heroes.'  But 
Mr.  Froude,  perhaps,  sees  that  it  was  a  symbol  to  the  Irish  world  of 
something  else  too."  * 

"This  Captain  Piers,  Captain  Ealegh,  and  Sir  William  Morgan 
were  subsequently  joined  in  the  one  commission  under  which  they 
exercised  martial  law,  or  rather  martial  executions  without  law,  in  the 
county  Cork.  .  .  .  The  Lord  Treasurer  did  not  like  such  work.  .  .  . 
The  year  after  Ealegli  had  written  from  Cork  complaining  that  the 
Earl  of  Ormond  was  not  severe  enough  in  Munster,  and  that  what 
was  wanted  was  the  fire  and  sword  of  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert  (his  half- 
brother),  who  boasted  of  'putting  man,  woman,  and  child  to  deatli.' 
Lord  Burghley  wrote  to  Sir  Henry  Wallop,  the  War  Treasurer  for 
Ireland,  on  the  10th  of  June,  1582,  '  that  the  Flemings  had  not  such 
cause  to  rebel  against  tlie  ojjjyression  of  the  Spaniards  as  the  Irish 
against  the  tyranny  of  England.' 

....  "Lord  Burghley  touched  the  root  of  the  evil,  when  lie 
instructed  the  Treasurer  Wallop,  that  confiscated  lands  in  Ireland 
were  not  to  be  given  to  persons,  but  to  offices.  .  .  .  Lord  Burghley's 
instructions  would  have  enabled  some  lands  to  be  attached  to  the 
office  of  Governor  or  Deputy  Governor  of  Cork,  but  Sir  Walter 
Ealegh  would  not  have  got  the  castles  and  farms  and  abbey  lands 
along  the  shores  of  the  Blackwater.  .  .  . 

"Ealegh  has  been  censured  for  recommending  his  half-brother's 
vigorous  measures,  but  in  Justice  to  him  it  should  be  remembered 
that  his  most  intimate  companions  have  recorded  similar  deeds  of 
their  own  when  claiming  Irish  lands  or  seeking  preferment.  .  .  . 

"In  stigmatizing  such  acts,  ]\Ir.  Froude  refers  to  Sir  Peter  Carew 
'  murdering  women  and  children  and  babies  that  had  scarcely  left 
the  breast.'  .  .  .  The  English  nation  were  shuddering  over  the 
atrocities  of  the  Duke  of  Alva.  The  children  in  the  nurseries  were 
being  inflamed  to  patriotic  rage  and  madness  by  tales  of  Spanish 
tyranny.     Yet  Alva's  bloody  sword  never  touched  the  young,   the 


Ralegh  in  Ireland,"  pp.  40-45 


168  Tlie  Cause  of  Ireland. 

defenceless,  or  those  whose  sex  even  dogs  can  recognize  and  re- 
spect." * 

These  testimonies  from  unimpeachable  witnesses  will  cast  a  vivid 
light  on  Elizabeth's  policy  of  confiscation,  extermination,  and  planta- 
tion in  Ireland. 

There  can  be  no  more  terrible  arraignment  of  the  conduct  of  a 
Christian  nation  than  the  simple  publication,  from  her  own  records, 
of  such  damning  evidence  as  is  contained  in  the  preceding  extracts 
and  in  those  by  which  we  conclude  this  demonstration  of  ofl&cial 
assassination  reduced  to  a  system.  Let  us  also  tear  the  mask  from 
the  faces  of  men  whom  we  hold  up  as  models,  as  idols  to  the  admira- 
tion of  the  young,  and  put  them  in  the  pillory. 

Sir  Walter  Raleigli's  Apology  for  Official  Assassination  and 
Poisoning. 

"The  Captains  of  Elizabeth  introduced  an  infamous  system  as 
new  to  Ireland  in  the  days  of  llalegh  as  the  English  muskets.  In 
the  fifth  book  of  his  'History  of  the  World'  Ealegli  discusses  the 
difference  between  '  killing  a  man  in  open  field  with  even  weapons, 
and  killing  by  guile.'  Writing  in  the  prison  of  the  Tower,  he  con- 
demns the  Hying  in  wait  for  blood  privily,'  'as  guilfull  murder,'  yet 
there  seems  little  doubt  that  he  had  previously  encouraged,  if  not 
practised,  the  assassination  of  the  Irish  landlords  and  chiefs  of  his 
time.     He  had  high  official  examples  to  guide  him. 

"'Practice  and  subornation,'  writes  Secretary  Fenton  to  Walsing- 
ham,  'is  as  necessary  as  force.'  Instead  of  killing  the  greatest  land- 
owner in  Munster  by  what  he  calls  'the  iincertain  end  of  arms,'  the 
Chief  Secretary  of  that  day  records  how  he  told  the  Lord  President 
to  get  some  one  to  undertake  that  service  'for  the  hire  of  a  thousand 
pounds  with  some  further  gratification  of  Desmond's  lands.'  The 
latest  biographer  of  Ralegh,  Mr.  Edward  Edwards,  thus  deals  with 
his  complicity  in  such  transactions  : 

" '  On  one  oth«r  important  matter,  Ralegh,  Carew,  and  Cecil  were 

*  "  Hist,  of  England,"  vol.  x.,  c.  59, 


Official  Assassination  and  Poisoning.  169 

at  one.  In  regard  to  wliat,  in  the  plirase  of  their  day,  were  called 
"practices  against  rebels,"  they  were  as  little  troubled  with  scruples  of 
conscience  as  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert,  or  Sir  Henry  Sidney,  or  Arthur 
Lord  Grey  of  Wilton  had  been  a  few  years  earlier.  In  plain  English, 
"practices  against  rebels"  meant  the  deliberate  assassination  of  reb- 
els, or  even  of  persons  vehemently  suspected  of  an  intention  to  rebel. 
Cecil  indeed  avov/ed  that  he  had  a  rooted  objection  to  the  killing  of  a 
rebel  by  poison.' 

"Mr.  Edwards  here  refers  to  Cecil's  objection  to  the  proposal  to 
get  rid  of  the  Earl  of  Tyrone  by  poison;  but  I  doubt  if  it  is  fair  to 
place  him  exactly  on  the  same  footing  in  this  matter  as  Ealegh  and 
Carew.  The  latter  certainly  thought  any  means  lawful  by  which  the 
lands  of  the  Irish  chiefs  could  be  obtained.  Mr.  Froude  quotes  a 
letter  of  his,  written  in  1602  to  the  Lord  Deputy  Mountjoy,  in  which 
he  describes  how  Hugh  O'Donnell,  who  had  gone  to  Spain  for  assist- 
ance, was  followed  by  a  hired  assassin,  who  poisoned  him  in  the  castle 
of  Simancas.  The  assassin,  Carew  writes,  'at  his  coming  in  Spain 
was  suspected  by  O'Donnell,  because  he  embarked  at  Cork;  but  after- 
wards he  insinuated  his  access  and  O'Donnell  is  dead.  He  never  told 
the  President  in  what  manner  he  would  kill  him;  but  did  assure  Mm 
it  sliould  be  effected.'  In  Carew's  original  letter  in  the  Public  Eecord 
Ofhce,  he  says  'O'Donnell  is  poisoned.'  The  words  'poisoned,' 
' President,' and  'kill,' are  in  cipher.  That  Ralegh  and  Cecil  were 
not  entirely  of  one  mind  on  this  subject  seems  probable  from  the  fol- 
lowing letter,  written,  Mr.  Payne  Collier  thinks,  when  Ralegh  was  in 
Ireland  in  October  1598: — 

" '  To  the  Riglit  Honorable  Sir  Robert  Cecil,  KnigJit,  Princijmll 
Secretary  to  Her  Majestie. 
"'Sir, — It  can  be  no  disgrace  if  it  weare  knowen  that  the  killing 
of  a  rebel  weare  practised;  for  you  see  that  the  lives  bi  anoynted 
princes  are  daylye  sought,  and  we  have  always  in  Ireland  geven  head 
money  for  the  killing  of  rebels  who  are  evermore  proclaymed  at  a 
price.  So  was  the  Earle  of  Desmonde  and  so  have  all  rebels  been 
practised  against.  Notwithstanding  I  have  written  this  enclosed  to 
Stafford  who  only  recommended  that  knave  to  me  upon  his  credit. 


170  The  Cause  of  Ireland, 

Butt  for  yoursealf,  you  are  not  to  be  touched  in  the  matter.  And 
for  me,  I  am  more  sorrye  for  beinge  deceaved  than  for  being  declared 
in  the  practise. 

" '  Your  Lordship's  ever  to  do  you  service, 

"'W.  Ealegh. 
" '  He  hathe  nothinge  under  my  hand  butt  a  passport.' " 

The  knave  who  got  the  passport  was  a  paid  murderer.  Mr. 
Edwards  surmises  that  the  '  beinge  deceaved '  refers  to  a  case  in 
which  Sir  George  Carew  describes  how  he  himself  had  hired  an  assas- 
sin, to  whom  he  gave  '  a  pistoll,  some  munitions,  and  ten  pounds  in 
money,'  to  kill  John  Fitz  Thomas,  the  owner  of  a  fine  estate,  but 
'  one  Coppinger,  sometime  a  footman  to  Sir  Walter  Ealegh,  who 
had  promised  him  (the  assassin)  faythfullye  to  assist  him,'  snatched 
the  weapon  from  his  hand  as  he  was  about  to  shoot  Fitz  Thomas  in 
Arlow  Woods,  where  they  were  passing  with  him  alone. 

We  have  seen  by  what  agencies  Shane  O'Neill  was  got  rid  of.  Of 
course  he  was  declared  a  traitor  after  death ;  an  act  of  attainder  was 
passed  against  him;  all  Tyrone  was  proclaimed  forfeit  to  the  Crown; 
and  the  Chiefs  who  acknowledged  Shane  as  their  prince  became 
Elizabeth's  vassals.  The  Irish  people  did  not  care  for  Elizabeth's 
proclamations.  After  Shane's  death,  his  Tanish,  Terlough  Luinagh 
O'JSTeill,  was  inaugurated  as  The  O'N^eill. 

These  brave  hearts  were  not  to  be  cowed  by  Elizabeth. 

Elizahetlis  First  Plantation. 

In  1570  Shane  O'Neill's  territory  was  given  out  to  be  colonized  by 
English  settlers.  A  portion  of  Armagh  was  sold  to  one  Thomas 
Chaterton  and  his  heirs;  the  district  of  Ardes  and  Clanaboy  in 
Down  was  granted  to  an  illegitimate  son  of  Sir  Thomas  Smith,  the 
Queen's  Secretary  of  State.  He  was  to  found  an  English  Protestant 
colony.  The  colonies  were  begun;  but  the  O'Neill  tribesmen  swept 
them  out  of  existence. 

In  1573  appears  on  the  colonization  scene  no  less  a  personage  than 
Walter  Devereux,  Earl  of  Essex.  Elizabeth  had  resolved  that  her 
favorite  should  succeed  in  his  undertaking.     She  gave  him  a  grant  of 


What  the  Eeforniatlo7i  had  Effected  up  to  1576.  171 

one  half  of  the  county  of  Antrim,  and  the  barony  of  Farney  in 
Monaghan.  She  advanced  him  a  sum  of  £10,000,  a  large  sum  for 
that  period,  and  especially  in  the  crippled  state  of  her  finances.  He 
was  given  the  title  of  President  of  Ulster.  The  territory  to  be 
colonized  was  occupied  by  the  Argyleshire  Scots  called  in  by  Shane 
O'Neill,  and  who  had  proved  his  bane.  The  Queen  ordered  them  to 
be  expelled  or  exterminated.  The  enterprise  from  first  to  last  was  a 
series  of  fearful  tragedies. 

Of  course  the  Irish  stoutly  resisted  the  intrusion  on  their  lands; 
nor  were  the  Scots  willing  to  be  slaughtered  like  sheep. 

Fair  means  failing  to  overcome  the  opposition  of  these  Celts  and 
their  Chiefs,  the  Earl  of  Essex  had  recourse  to  foul.  He  had  learned 
a  lesson  from  Sidney  and  Sussex.  He  invited  Con  O'Donnell  to 
attend  a  eonference,  treacherously  seized  his  person,  and  sent  him  a 
prisoner  to  Dublin.  O'Neill  of  Clanaboy  was  lured,  in  like  manner, 
to  a  banquet  in  Belfast  with  his  wife,  brother,  and  retainers:  Essex 
seized  upon  them,  "and  put  them  all  to  the  sword,  men,  ivomen, 
youths,  and  maidens,  tivo  hundred  in  number.  He  attacked  Eathlin 
Island,  the  stronghold  where  the  Scots  had  left  their  wives  and  their 
children,  their  sick  and  aged,  and  after  receiving  the  surrender  of  its 
scanty  garrison,  massacred  them  to  a  man,  and  hunted  out  and  slew 
every  living  soul,  man,  woman,  and  child,  who  had  taken  refuge  in 
the  caves  and  fastnesses  of  the  island,  in  all  some  six  hundred  and 
fifty  persons."* 

Such  were  the  methods  employed  to  civilize  out  of  existence  these 
incurable  Celts ! 

Before  describing  Elizabeth's  "Plantation  of  Munster,"  it  will  not 
be  out  of  place  to  show  what  had  come,  in  the  year  1576,  of  the 
labors  of  the  religious  ''reformers"  even  in  the  part  of  Ireland  best 
ruled  by  English  law.  The  sequestration  of  all  church  property  by 
Henry  VIII. ,  the  persecution  of  the  ministers  and  professors  of  the 
ancient  faith  by  himself  and  his  son;  Elizabeth's  still  more  rigorous 

*  "Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p,  127. 


172  Tlie  Cause  of  Ireland. 

measures — the  tyrannical  enforcement  of  the  Acts  of  Uniformity  and 
Snpremac}^,  as  well  as  of  the  fierce  edicts  against  all  Catholic  or 
"Papist"  bishops,  priests,  and  monks, — were  an  enormous  grievance 
added  to  all  those  which  made  the  yoke  of  England  intolerable  to  the 
Irish.  The  historians  of  Henry's  reign  tell  us  with  what  needless 
vandalism,  and  what  display  of  sacrilegious  contempt  for  the  national 
religion,  the  armies  accompanying  the  Lord  Deputies,  Leonard  Gray 
and  others,  despoiled,  unroofed,  and  mined  churches  and  monas- 
teries. Of  like  performances  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  we  have 
ample  details  in  the  State  Paper  Office. 

It  made  the  Irish  heart  very  sore  to  behold  such  desecration  and 
ruin.  And  now,  up  to  this  same  year  1576,  what  have  Elizabeth  and 
her  "reformers"  given  to  Ireland  in  return  for  the  Faith  they  had 
been  laboring  to  proscribe,  in  return  for  the  religious  institutions 
which  were  the  creation  of  the  Irish  people's  piety,  and  to  which,  as 
the  well-tried  fidelity  of  ages  proved,  they  clung  with  such  fond 
memories? 

Let  the  Lord  Deputy  Sir  Henry  Sidney  inform  us.  In  a  report 
to  Elizabeth  he  gives  his  opinion  as  to  the  measures  required  for  "  the 
reformation  of  the  island."  From  the  first  years  of  Henry  YIII. 
there  has  been  continually  question  of  reformation,  reformation,  ref- 
ormation. They  have  shed  torrents  of  blood  to  effect  it,  spent  incal- 
culable treasures,  wasted  and  ruined  the  country:  What  kind  of  a 
reformation  have  they  effected  ? 

Sir  Henry  Sidney  is  describing  the  "Church  by  Law  established  in 
Ireland,"  her  clergy,  and  institutions. 

"The  church,"  he  says,  "is  now  so  spoiled,  as  well  by  tlie  ruin  of 
the  temples,  as  the  dissipation  and  embezzling  of  the  patrimony,  and 
most  of  all  for  want  of  sufficient  ministers,  as  so  deformed  and  over- 
thrown a  church  there  is  not,  I  am  sure,  in  any  region  where  Christ 
is  professed." 

In  a  letter  to  the  Queen  he  enters  at  greater  length  upon  tlie  same 
subject.  He  is  "advertised  of  the  particular  state  of  tlie  church  in 
the  bishoprick  of  Meath  (being  the  best  inhabited  country  of  all  this 


Sidney's  Picture  of  tlie  Model  Diocese  in  Ireland.  173 

realm)  by  the  honest,  zealous,  and  learned  bishop  of  the  same,  Mr. 
Hugh  Bradye,  a  godly  minister  for  the  gospel,  and  a  good  servant  to 
your  highness,  who  went  from  church  to  church  himself,  and  found 
that  there  are  within  his  diocese  two  hundred  and  twenty-four  parisli 
churches,  of  which  number  one  hundred  and  five  are  impropriated  to 
sundry  possessions  now  of  your  highness,  and  all  leased  out  for  years, 
or  in  fee-farm  to  several  farmers,  and  great  gain  reaped  out  of  them 
above  the  rent  which  your  majesty  receiveth;  no  parson  or  vicar  resi- 
dent upon  any  of  them,  and  a  very  simple  or  sorry  curate,  for  the 
most  part,  appointed  to  serve  them,  among  which  number  of  curates 
only  eighteen  were  found  able  to  speak  English,  the  rest  Irish  priests, 
or  rather  Irish  rogues,  having  very  little  Latin,  less  learning  and 
civility.  All  here  live  upon  the  bare  alteragies  (as  they  term  them), 
which,  God  knoweth,  are  very  small,  and  were  wont  to  live  upon  the 
gain  of  Masses,  Dirges,  Shrivings,  and  such  like  trumjjery,  godly 
abolished  by  your  majesty,  no  one  house  standing  for  any  of  them  to 
dwell  in.  In  many  places  the  very  walls  of  the  churches  down,  very 
few  chancels  covered,  windows  and  doors  ruined  and  spoiled.  There 
are  fifty-two  parish  churches  more  in  the  same  diocese,  which  have 
vicars  endued  upon  them,  better  served  and  maintained  than  the 
other,  yet  but  badly.  There  are  fifty-two  parish  churches  more,  res- 
idue of  the  first  number  of  two  hundred  and  twenty-four,  which  per- 
tain to  divers  particular  lords,  and  these,  though  in  better  estate  than 
the  rest  commonly,  are  yet  far  from  well. 

"  If  this  be  the  estate  of  the  church  in  the  best  peopled  diocese," 
— he  continues — "and  best  governed  country  of  your  realm  (as  in 
truth  it  is),  easy  is  it  for  your  majesty  to  conjecture  in  what  case  the 
rest  is."  * 

Was  it  worth  while  to  ravage  and  waste  this  peaceful  and  fertile 
land,  to  oppress  and  exterminate  its  people,  only  to  effect  "  in  the 
best  peopled  diocese  and  best  governed  country "  in  the  Kingdom 
such  a  "reformation"  as  is  here  described?     We  request  the  atten- 

*  Sidney's  Orig-inal  Dispatches,  MS.  Cotton,  Titus  B.  X.  in  the  British  Museum. 


X74  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

tion  of  the  reader  to  tlie  extraordinary  amount  of  parish  churches 
within  a  single  diocese,  found  by  the  first  "reformers"  sent  by 
Henry,  without  mentioning  the  monasteries.  Were  these  the'  crea- 
tion of  an  uncivilized  race  ?  Were  they  evidences  of  the  barbarity  of 
the  people  ?  And  is  this  the  way  that  one  Christian  nation  helps 
another  to  ascend  to  a  higher  plane  of  civilization  ?  to  taste  the  fruits 
of  a  diviner  form  of  religious  belief? 

It  is  curious,  after  this  description  of  the  condition  of  the  Re- 
formed Eeligion  in  Ireland,  to  read  the  proposal  made  by  Sidney  of 
the  o-reat  measure  to  be  taken  for  maintaining  these  commencements 
of  a  new  and  higher  order  of  things. 

"Let  this  be  a  maxim  indisputable,  that  a  garrison  of  three  hun- 
dred horsemen  and  seven  hundred  footmen  may  be  continually  kept 
here,  without  any  great  charge  to  England.  This  charge  now  must 
be  reared  hy  the  new  rents  of  the  Irishry,  and  by  an  alteration  of  the 
old  burthen  of  the  English  Pale;  for  though  the  Irishry  be  now 
mollified  and  nialleable,  so  that  you  may  have  of  them  what  reason- 
ably you  will  ask,  but  yet  never  without  an  army." 

And  now  we  come  to  Elizabeth's  Plantations  in  the  South  of 
Ireland. 

The  extracts  given  a  few  pages  above  show  what  agencies  were 
at  work  both  in  Elizabeth's  English  Privy  Council,  and  among  tlie 
Officials  in  Dublin  Castle  to  prepare  the  way  for  an  energetic  and 
decisive  policy  of  confiscation  and  extermination, — so  as  to  leave  the 
land  free  for  English  Protestant  colonists.  This  policy  alone  fur- 
nishes a  key  to  the  insurrections,  conspiracies,  correspondence  with 
foreign  powers,  and  the  desolating  wars  that  swept  over  every  province 
of  Ireland  during  the  last  quarter  of  the  sixteenth  century. 

The  attempts  at  colonization  in  Ulster  and  the  atrocities  commit- 
ted there  by  the  Earl  of  Essex,  warned  all  Ireland  that  the  "Irishry" 
in  every  province  were  to  be  dealt  with  as  Mary  and  Philip  had  dealt 
with  the  inhabitants  of  Leix  and  Offaly.  The  certain  knowledge— no 
longer  a  mere  rumor,  but  a  certain  knowledge  based  on  the  avowed 
intentions  of  the  Government, — that  none  but  Protestants  and  Eng- 


Fittori's  Experiment  hi  Connmight.  175 

lisli  would  be  tolerated  in  Ireland,  filled  the  souls  of  all  classes  with  a 
spirit  of  fierce  resistance. 

English  historians  of  our  day  wonder  at  the  facility  with  which 
the  threatened  Irish  looked  heyond  the  seas  for  some  help  which 
would  stand  between  them  and  the  Extermination  which  loomed  up 
in  the  near  distance,  terrible  and  inevitable  like  the  Final  Doom. 
They  blame  the  leaders  of  the  Irish  People— both  Celts  and  Anglo- 
Irish — for  thus  harboring  and  fostering  treasonable  plots.  What 
else,  after  all,  was  concealed  under  all  the  most  conciliatory  forms  of 
English  policy  and  English  rule  but  the  crushing  of  the  religion 
of  the  Irish,  even  when  there  was  not  an  open  and  avowed  purpose  of 
extirpating  the  race  itself  ?  And, — it  surely  is  plain  enough  from 
the  authentic  evidence  daily  brought  to  light  from  official  sources, — 
whatever  moderation  the  English  Privy  Council  may  have  felt  dis- 
posed to  show  toward  Irishmen  and  their  religion,  the  Dublin  Privy 
Council  never  wavered,  never  relented  in  the  determination  to  make 
of  Ireland  West  Britain,  one  in  religion,  language,  and  blood  with 
the  larger  island. 

The  Kildares  and  the  Desmonds;  the  Ormondes  and  the  O'Briens; 
the  great  Irish  Chieftains  of  South  and  West  and  North,  were  per- 
fectly aware,  in  the  Year  of  Grace  1575,  that  such  was  the  fixed 
policy  of  Dublin  Castle, — and  Dublin  Castle  had  always  ruled  and 
misgoverned  Ireland  in  spite  of  English  Kings  and  English  Privy 
Councils. 

The  plan  proposed  by  Sidney,  and  first  originated  by  Sussex,  of 
making  the  "  new  rents  of  the  Irishry  "  support  all  the  expenses  in 
Ireland  of  Church  and  State,  even  though  Church  and  State  com- 
bined to  oppose  them,  was  put  in  operation  in  this  wise.  A  Presi- 
dent was  placed  at  the  head  of  each  province  with  a  large  military 
establishment.  The  soldiers  were  to  live  upon  the  people,  while 
enabling  the  Lord  President  to  enforce  the  Uniformity  and 
Supremacy  Acts,  and  to  collect  from  recusants  the  heavy  fines  im- 
posed by  the  law  for  non-attendance  in  "church.'^ 

"The  first  experiment  was  made  in  Connaught  by  the  appoint- 


176  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

ment  of  Sir  Edward  Fitton,  a  judge  of  the  Queen's  Bench  in  Dubhn, 
to  the  office  of  President  with  a  commission  to  execute  martial  law. 
The  immediate  consequence  of  this  suppression  of  the  ordinar}^  law 
of  the  land  was  a  rising  of  various  members  of  the  O'Brien  and 
Bourke  families,  wdiich  he  endeavored  to  put  down  by  a  succession  of 
acts  of  violence;  and  when  he  had  been  all  but  driven  out  of  the 
country  the  Government  was  compelled  to  recall  him. 

"But  the  scheme  which  found  most  favor  in  the  eyes  of  the 
Queen  and  in  the  eyes  of  her  iron  deputy.  Sir  Henry  Sidney,  ivas  the 
old  one  of  planting  the  country  with  English  settlers.  England  was 
full  of  men  who  aspired  to  be  soldiers  of  fortune;  the  discovery  of 
the  New  World  had  made  them  drunk  with  the  spirit  of  adventure; 
they  looked  upon  Ireland,  as  indeed  did  even  the  majority  of  sober 
Englishmen,  as  a  country  ripe  for  colonization,  inhabited  by  a  race 
who  deserved  no  better  treatment  than  the  wild  beasts,  and  whose  fat 
lands  were  the  proper  birthright  of  enterprising  but  impecunious 
younger  sons. 

"But  the  most  serious  effort  made  toward  a  plantation,  and  the 
one  attended  by  the  most  serious  consequences,  was  the  proposal  made 
to  colonize  Munster  by  a  number  of  gentlemen  from  the  west  of  Eng- 
land, There  were  some  twenty-seven  volunteers — Sir  Humphrey 
Gilbert,  Sir  Wareham  St.  Leger,  Sir  Peter  Carew,  Sir  Eichard  Gren- 
ville,  Courtmay,  Chichester,  and  others — who  offered  to  relieve  the 
Queen  of  all  expense  and  trouble  in  Southern  Ireland,  in  return  for 
tlie  permission  to  confiscate  the  counties  of  Cork,  Limerick,  and 
Kerry.  The  leading  spirit  in  this  enterprise  was  an  adventurer  of 
ancient  blood  but  broken  fortune,  Sir  Peter  Carew,  who  laid  claims 
to  vast  estates  in  Carlow  and  Cork,  the  lands  granted  to  Fitz  Stephen 
in  the  days  of  Henry  II.,  which  had  passed  by  marriage  to  Carew's 
ancestors,  but  which  had  been  deserted  by  them  two  hundred  years 
since,  had  been  reoccupied  by  the  Cavanaghs  and  the  Earl  of  Des- 
mond, and  had  passed  into  the  hands  of  third  parties.  .  .  .  There 
were  other  estates  which  had,  in  a  similar  way,  been  lost  to  their 
Anglo-Saxon  owners  in  consequence  of  their  deserting  the  country. 


Sir  Peter  Carew  tries  his  hand  at  3Iassacring.  177 

the  claims  to  which  were  doubly  statute-barred  .  .  . ;  and  these  stale 
claims  were  brought  up  as  speculations  by  the  enterprising  undertak- 
ers above  referred  to.  St.  Leger  and  Grenville  took  possession  of  a 
number  of  farms  belonging  to  Desmond  and  Mac  Carthy  More,  but 
were  promptly  expelled  by  the  owners.  Sir  Peter  Carew  surrounded 
himself  with  a  gang  of  ruflSans,  established  himself  at  Leighlin,  and 
seized  some  lands  belonging  to  Ormonde's  brother,  Sir  Edward 
Butler.  The  Butlers  fell  upon  him,  and  tried  to  drive  him  out  by 
force,  cruelly  wreaking  their  vengeance  upon  some  miserable  Irish 
who  had  joined  themselves  to  him;  and  Carew  retaliated  by  attacking 
Sir  Edward's  house  and  massacring  every  hiiman  being  he  found 
there,  down  to  a  child  of  three  years  old. 

"The  story  of  Carew's  atrocities  spread  like  wildfire.  A  suspicion 
of  the  secret  plans  for  confiscation  ran  through  the  South.  A  league 
for  self-defence  was  formed  between  the  Cleraldines,  the  Mac  Carthys, 
and  Ormonde's  brothers,  which  was  countenanced  by  Thomond, 
Clanricarde,  and  Turlough  Linagh  (O'Neill).  The  Archbishop  of 
Cashel  was  sent  to  beg  for  help  from  Philip  II.  and  the  Pope,  and 
the  standard  of  revolt  was  actually  raised  by  Sir  James  Fitzmaurice 
Fitz  Gerald,  a  cousin  of  the  Earl  of  Desmond.  The  Earl  and  his 
brother.  Sir  John,  bad  shortly  before  been  seized  by  Sir  Henry  Sid- 
ney and  forwarded  to  London,  where  they  were  lodged  in  the  Tower, 
in  order  to  compel  them  to  accept  an  adverse  decision  on  their 
quarrel  with  Ormonde,  whose  steady  loyalty  to  the  Tudor  family  was 
to  be  rewarded  by  a  correspondingly  steady  support.  The  Govern- 
ment, afraid  that  even  Ormonde  might  grow  disaffected  if  the  C07}fis- 
cation  conspiracy  were  authenticated,  hastened  to  disavow  all  such 
intentions,  loaded  him  with  favors,  and  persuaded  him  to  detach  his 
brothers  from  the  rebel  (?)  cause.  Sidney  then  collected  a  force 
and  marched  into  Waterford,  Tipperary,  and  Limerick,  burning  vil- 
lages, blowing  up  castles,  and  hanging  their  garrisons.  He  overawed 
Connaught  by  occupying  Galway  and  Eoscommon;  and  he  established 
Humphrey  Gilbert  at  Kilmallock  to  strike  terror  into  the  people, 
which  he  effectually  did  by  the  indiscriminate  slaughter  of  all  who 
12 


178  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

came  in  his  way,  irrespective  of  age  or  sex.  Ormonde  succeeded  in 
pacifying  liis  brothers,  who  made  their  submission  and  were  forgiven, 
and  James  Fitzmaurice  retired  with  his  followers  to  lead  an  outlaw's 
life  in  the  Kerry  mountains."  * 

Such  was  the  prologue  to  the  Great  Tragedy  of  the  Desolation  of 
Munster. 

Now,  before  lifting  the  curtain  on  a  series  of  horrors  which 
Christians  fancy  could  only  have  been  committed  by  the  followers  of 
Genghis  Khan,  we  must  see  if  Elizabeth  herself  really  sanctions  the 
diabolical  schemes  of  the  Dublin  Privy  Council.  The  measures  put 
in  practice  by  Sir  Henry  Sidney  for  making  the  Irish  support  all  the 
expenses  of  the  army  and  the  government,  having  caused  great  dis- 
content, the  Gentlemen  of  the  Pale  sent  three  of  their  number, 
eminent  lawyers,  to  present  a  remonstrance  to  the  Queen. 

"Four  Irish  lords,"  says  Wright, f  "who  happened  to  be  attendant 
at  court,  the  Earls  of  Kildare  and  Ormonde,  and  Lords  Gormanstown 
and  Dunsany,  were  summoned  to  attend,  and,  being  required  to  give 
their  opinion  on  the  allegations  of  their  countrymen,  they  declared 
that  an  assessment  had  always  been  customary  for  the  maintenance  of 
the  Queen's  garrisons  and  the  household  of  her  deputy,  but  cautiously 
avoided  touching  on  the  point  of  prerogative,  by  confining  themselves 
to  the  necessities  and  condition  of  her  subjects  in  Ireland,  and  hum- 
bly pleaded  the  grievousness  of  the  present  imposition,  and  prayed 
that  it  might  be  moderated.  The  Queen  listened,  at  least  with 
affected  tenderness  and  compassion  to  these  allegations,  and  on  this 
occasion  she  is  said  to  have  uttered  the  exclamation.  Ah  !  how  I  fear 
lest  it  he  objected  to  us  as  it  was  to  Tiberius  by  Baho,  concerning  the 
Dalmatian  commotions :  'You,  you  it  is,  that  are  in  fault,  who  have 
committed  your  flocks  not  to  shepherds  but  to  wolves.'  This  com- 
passion, however,  if  real,  was  but  the  weakness  of  a  moment,  for  she 
was  very  easily  persuaded  by  her  ministers  that  the  most  important 
principle  involved  in, the  question  was  the  maintenance  of  her  prerog- 

*  "  The  Kinsdom  of  Ireland,"  pp.  128-130.  +  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  i.  p.  456. 


The  Munster  Tragedy  begins.  179 

ative.  Under  the  influence  of  this  consideration,  the  Irish  agents, 
instead  of  being  allowed  to  appeal  to  law  and  justice,  were  committed 
to  the  Fleet,  for  their  alleged  contumacy  in  opposing  the  ro_yal 
authority.  The  Queen  then  addressed  letters  to  Sir  Henry  Sidney 
and  the  Irish  council,  reprimanded  them  for  their  oversight  in  not 
having  immediately  committed  and  punished  those  who  had  presumed 
to  deny  the  legality  of  their  measure.  .  .  .  The  agents  in  England 
were  brought  a  second  time  before  the  Privy  Council,  and,  as  they 
appeared  equally  determined  on  their  resistance,  .  .  .  they  were 
removed  ...  to  the  Tower,  which  implied  that  their  offence  was  con- 
sidered to  be  of  a  treasonable  nature.  This  new  rigor  excited 
a  general  feeling  of  alarm  and  indignation  through  the  Irish 
Pale." 

This  passage,  however,  is  only  quoted  here  to  show  that  Eliza- 
beth's moments  of  womanly  "weakness,"  in  showing  any  kind  of 
commiseration  for  Irish  suffering,  were  rare  indeed,  and  as  transitory 
as  a  flash  of  lightning  illumining  a  long  dark  night.  It  has  been 
the  boast  of  English  writers  that  Elizabeth  never  sanctioned  whole- 
sale massacre.  We  beg  our  readers  to  peruse  the  following  extract. 
By  giving  it  we  rather  anticipate  on  the  exploits  of  the  two  gentle 
poet-friends  and  companions  in  arms,  Walter  Raleigh  and  Edmund 
Spenser. 

We  are  in  Xovember,  1580.  The  South  of  Ireland  was  up  in 
arms.  On  the  coast  of  Kerry,  at  a  place  called  St.  Mary  Wick  or 
Smerwick,  a  foreign  force  come  to  the  aid  of  the  insurgents  had  oc- 
cupied a  stronghold,  which  they  strengthened  still  more.  It  is 
beleaguered  by  sea  and  land.  Lord  Grey,  the  Deputy,  who  com- 
manded in  person  the  siege,  had  with  him  both  Spenser  and  Ealeigh. 
After  three  days'  fighting,  the  Spanish  commander  offered  to  capitu- 
late but  had  to  surrender  at  discretion. 

The  surrender  took  place  on  November  10.  What  followed  is 
related  by  the  historian  Froude. 

"Don  Bastian  with  the  officers  came  out  with  ensigns  trailing, 
and  gave  themselves  up  as  prisoners.     The  men  piled  their  arms  out- 


180  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

side  tlie  walls,  and  waited  defenceless  to  learn  the  pleasure  of  their 
conquerors.  They  were  strangers,  and,  by  this  time,  alone.  The 
officers  were  reserved  for  their  ransom.  Common  prisoners  were 
inconvenient  and  expensive,  and  it  was  thought  desirable  to  read  a 
severe  lesson  to  Catholic  sympathizers  in  Ireland.  '  The  Lord  of 
Hosts,'  wrote  Grey,  '  had  delivered  the  enemy  to  us,  none  of  ours 
being  hurt,  Mr.  Cheke  alone  excepted.  Then  I  put  in  certain 
bands,  who  fell  straight  to  execution.'  A  certain  number  of  the 
original  party  had  fallen  sick,  and  had  been  sent  back  to  Spain. 
With  the  exception  of  these  and  of  the  officers,  the  entire  party  were 
slaiightered.  A  few  women,  some  of  them  pregnant,  were  hanged. 
A  servant  of  Saunders,  an  Irish  gentleman,  and  a  priest  were  hanged 
also.  The  bodies,  six  hundred  in  all,  were  stripped  and  laid  out 
upon  the  sands,  '^as  gallant  goodly  personages,' said  Grey,  'as  ever 
were  beheld. ' " 

"Mr.  Fronde,  after  referring  to  Camden's  statement  that  Lord 
Grey  had  shed  tears  and  Queen  Elizabeth  had  wished  the  cruelty 
undone,  surmises  that  they  might  possibly  '  have  felt  some  pity  for 
the  subjects  of  the  King  of  Spain  which  was  refused  to  the  wives  and 
babies  of  the  Irish  chiefs.'  But  he  gives  good  reasons  for  doubting 
Lord  Grey's  tears  or  the  sincerity  of  the  Queen's  pity. 

"Mr.  Froude  is  the  first  English  historian  who  admits  that  Queen 
Elizabeth  had  sanctioned  this  early  exploit  of  Grey  and  Kalegh. 
For  nearly  three  centuries  the  royal  approbation  of  the  Mahometan 
lesson  of  Smerwick  was  denied  or  doubted  by  British  writers,  whilst 
on  the  other  hand  the  popular  belief  in  Ireland  was  universal,  that 
Grey  had  broken  faith,  and  that  Elizabeth  had  approved  of  the  mas- 
sacre. .  .  .  The  two  letters,  from  Elizabeth  to  the  Lord  Deputy, 
printed  in  the  appendix,  show  that  the  popular  Irish  view  was  well 
founded.  The  first  letter  is  dated  December  12,  1580,  and  is  in 
reply  to  Lord  Grey's  despatch  of  the  12th  of  November.  In  this 
letter  she  says  the  deed  performed  by  him  was  ''greately  to  our 
lyking.'  The  second  letter  was  Avritten  by  the  Queen  two  years  sub- 
sequently,  and  refers  with  satisfaction  to  his  exploit.     They  were 


Wholesale  Massacres  boasted  of  to   Walsingliam.  181 

both  rendered  accessible  to  the  public  only  a  few  years  ago  when  the 
State  Papers  were  calendared  at  the  Public  Record  Office. 

"  What  real  ground  the  Irish  people  have  for  the  proverb,  '  The 
Faith  of  Grey/  is  difficult  to  determine. 

"The  Abbe  Mac  Geoghegan  had  asserted  that  one  or  two  of  the 
prisoners  had  been  tortured  or  mutilated  before  being  put  to  death. 
This  was  denied  as  a  malicious  fable.  .  .  .  One  of  the  official  reports 
however  to  Sir  Francis  Walsingham,  the  Queen's  Secretary  of  State, 
in  the  seventy-eighth  volume  of  the  State  Papers  relating  to  Ireland 
for  1580,  makes  the  following  mention  of  the  torture  and  muti- 
lation:— 

" '  The  ffortes  were  yielded,  all  the  Irishmen  and  women  lianged, 
and  four  handred  and  upwardes  of  Italyans  and  others  put  to  the 
sworde.  ...  A  Ifrayer  and  others  kept  in  store  to  be  executed  after 
examination  had  of  them.  .  ,  .  Next  day  was  executed  an  English- 
man who  served  Dr.  Saunders,  one  Plunckett,  and  an  Irishe  Priest, 
theire  armes  and  legges  were  broken  and  hanged  upon  a  gallows.'  "  * 

Down  to  the  day  of  her  death,  as  we  have  already  said  and  proved 
on  evidence,  Elizabeth  was  swayed  in  all  her  policy  towards  Ireland 
by  the  counsels  of  the  Dublin  Castle,  by  the  greedy  passions  of  that 
sanguinary  Club  of  Adventurers  made  up  of  such  men  as  Raleigh, 
Spenser,  the  Carews,  Humphrey  Gilbert,  Drury,  Pelham,  Lord  Grey, 
Mountjoy,  Fitz  Williams,  and  Richard  Boyle — the  cleverest  villain  of 
them  all. 

The  dispatches  still  extant  in  the  State  Paper  Office,  addressed  to 
Secretary  Walsingham,  and  to  the  Lords  of  the  Privy  Council,  were 
read  before  Elizabeth.  Where  is  there  evidence  that  any  of  them, 
suggesting  more  rigorous  measures  against  the  Irish  Papists,  or 
reciting  such  horrors  as  the  following,  drew  forth  from  Elizabeth  a 
single  word  of  reprobation  ? 

Sir  Nicholas  Malbie  writes  to  Walsingham,  in  April,  1580  : 

"This  day  the  forces  which  I  have  entertained  took  the  strong 

*  Quoted  from  "  Kalegli  iu  Ireland." 


183  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Castle  of  Dwnemene  from  Shane  Mac  Hubert,  and  put  tlie  ward, 
both  men,  women,  and  children  to  tlie  sword." 

Captain  Zouche,  another  of  the  band  of  exterminators  associated 
with  Ealeigh  and  Spenser,  writes  to  the  Secretary  of  State,  on  the 
taking  of  a  castle  in  the  county  of  Limerick  : 

"  They  made  no  defence  of  fight,  but  the  house  being  entered  they 
yielded,  and  some  sought  to  swim  away;  but  there  escaped  not  one, 
neither  of  man,  v/oman,  nor  child." 

Sir  Richard  Bingham,  Lord  President  of  Connaught,  describing 
the  battle,  or  rather  the  slaughter,  at  Ardnary  in  Connaught,  says : 

"The  number  of  their  fighting  men  slain  and  drowned  that  day 
we  estimated  and  numbered  to  be  fourteen  or  fifteen  hundred,  besides 
boys,  2vomen,  churls,  and  children,  which  could  not  be  so  few  as  so 
many  more  and  upwards." 

That  is  to  say,  that  about  two  thousand  non-combatants,  com- 
prising boys,  women,  and  children,  were  pitilessly  butchered  by  that 
inhuman  monster,  whose  cruelty  Sir  John  Perrott  could  not  restrain, 
and  who  was  the  ancestor  of  that  Bingham  family,  one  of  the  perma- 
nent curses  of  the  County  Mayo. 

Sir  William  Drury's  "bloody  assize,"  completing  the  terror,  the 
despair,  the  frenzy  of  the  unfortunate  populations,  drove  the  whole 
Irish  people  to  cast  their  fate  with  the  weak  and  vacillating  Des- 
mond, and  to  fight  "For  God  and  Country"  while  vainly  expecting 
men  and  arms  from  Spain.  Sir  James  Fitzmaurice  perished  early 
in  the  great  Desmond  Eebellion,  and  left  the  men  of  the  South 
without  an  experienced  or  able  chief. 

From  England  came  Ormonde,  with  Sir  "William  Pelham  as  Lord 
Justice,  to  continue  Drury's  reign  of  terror.  Ormonde,  who  had 
detached  his  brothers  from  the  national  cause,  and  had  received 
great  favors  from  the  Queen,  felt  himself  bound  to  prove  to  the 
Irish  that  he  was  both  a  good  Englishman  and  a  good  Protestant. 
In  1579,  consequently,  began  in  good  earnest  the  campaign  of  ex- 
termination, of  which  all  preceding  commanders  had  only  given  a 
mere  foreshadowing. 


The  Infernal  Columns  in  Munster.  183 

"Pelham  and  Ormonde  advanced  in  two  columns,  the  one  from 
Dublin,  the  other  from  Kilkenny;  while  the  fleet,  under  Sir  William 
AVinter,  sailed  round  to  support  them  on  the  coast  of  Kerry.  The 
path  of  the  two  forces  was  marked  by  pitiless  destruction  of  life 
and  property:  crops  and  cabins  were  burnt,  and  every  living  being 
— tJie  sick,  the  aged,  the  women,  the  infants — were  all  ruthlessly 
slaughtered.  A  junction  was  effected  at  Tralee,  and  they  turned 
northward  to  destroy  Desmond's  castles  in  Limerick.  .  .  .  The  two 
English  commanders  then  continued  their  raid  to  the  extremities 
of  Kerry,  plundering,  burning,  and  murdering,^  as  far  as  Dingle 
and  Valentia ;  they  then  brought  their  forces  back  to  Askeaton 
and  Cork.  Eesistance  there  had  been  none.  Their  small  but  dis- 
ciplined forces,  well  armed  with  firelocks,  had  marched  from  one 
end  of  Munster  to  the  other.  The  rebels,  half-naked,  and  armed 
with  spears  and  knives,  had  been  unable  to  meet  them  in  the 
field,  and  when  resistance  had  been  attempted,  it  was  behind  stone 
walls.  The  ferocity  of  the  English  commanders  had  cowed  the 
people  into  sullen  quiet.  .  .  .  Ormonde,  in  a  state  paper  enum- 
erating his  services,  is  said  to  have  put  to  death  '88  captains  and 
leaders,  with  1,547  notorious  traitors  and  malefactors,  and  above 
4,000  others.'" 

We  omit  to  mention  at  any  length  such  bright  gleams  of  success 
for  the  Irish  as  the  terrible  defeat  of  Lord  Grey's  forces  in  the  gorge 
of  Glenmalure,  where  Sir  Peter  Carew  fell,  and  that  no  less  ferocious 
Colonel  Cosbie,  the  fiend  of  the  treachery  and  massacre  at  the  Kath 
of  Mullaghmast.  What  chance  had  the  unarmed,  undisciplined,  and 
ill-led  Irish  gatherings  against  the  veteran  soldiery  of  England.  Yet, 
they  would  not  submit  to  see  their  wives  and  children  with  their  aged 
fathers  and  mothers  massacred  before  their  eyes  without  risking  their 
own  lives  in  their  defence, — or  the  land  of  Ireland  wrested  from  them 
foot  by  foot,  without  contesting  its  possession  at  all  risks  and  with 
every  means  at  their  disposal. 

*  The  Italics  are  our  own. 


184  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Adam  Loftus, — anotlier  of  Elizabeth's  boy-favorites,  was  now 
Arclibisliop  of  Dublin,  Lord  Chancellor,  Lord  Justice,  and  all  power- 
ful; with  liini  was  associated,  as  Lord  Justice,  Sir  Henry  Wallop,  a 
spirit  as  unscrupulous  and  as  sanguinary  as  his  own.  The  Desmond 
rebellion  had  been  extinguished  in  a  deluge  of  blood.  But,  as  it  had 
been  waged  against  Catholics,  and  because  they  were  Catholics,  their 
co-religionists  in  the  Pale  of  English  descent,  had,  very  naturally, 
sympathized  with  them.  The  insurrection  had  been  systematically 
provoked.  Those  engaged  in  it  were  looked  upon  more  in  the  light 
of  men  persecuted  and  slain  for  conscience'  sake,  than  as  rebels. 
The  Desmond  estates  were  now  ready  for  confiscation.  But  these  did 
not  appear  sufficient  to  the  Castle  Officials.  They  hungered  for  the 
lands  of  the  Pale  belonging  to  the  Anglo-L'ish  Papists.  Both  branches 
of  the  House  of  Fitz  Gerald  must  be  annihilated. 

"Gray  swiftly  returned  to  Dublin.  There  ho  arrested  Kildare 
and  Lord  Delvin  on  suspicion,  and  flung  them  into  prison;  he  turned 
savagely  on  the  Wicklow  insurgents,  and,  taught  by  his  experience  at 
Glenmalure,  organized  a  number  of  small  bands  to  hunt  them  from 
the  mountains.  Two  of  the  Eustaces  and  Gerald  O'Toole  he  caught 
and  beheaded;  Lord  Baltinglass  escaped  to  the  continent.  A  reign 
of  terror  then  began  in  Dublin.  A  conspiracy  to  seize  the  Castle  and 
liberate  the  imprisoned  peers  was  discovered,  and  martial  law  was 
proclaimed:  the  smaller  m.en  were  hanged  in  batches,  and  nineteen 
of  the  best  blood  of  the  Pale  were  brought  to  trial  for  treason.  Short 
work  was  made  by  pliant  juries,  and  the  whole  of  them  were  con- 
victed and  hanged;  while  Kildare  was  removed  to  England  and  sub- 
sequently died  in  the  Tower. 

"  Nothing  was  now  left  to  be  done  but  to  hunt  down  The  Des- 
mond, and  those  of  his  adherents  who  still  clung  to  him.  Ormonde 
was  placed  in  supreme  command  in  Munster;  Captain  Raleigh  was  in 
command  at  Cork;  Captain  Loach  at  Kilmallock;  and  Captain  Acliin 
at  Ad^-e.  The  sword  and  the  gallows  were  the  instruments  for  paci- 
fying the  country.  Achin  seized  the  Castle  of  David  Purcell  at  Kil- 
dimo,  and  slew  one  hundred  and  fifty  women  and  children;  Ormonde 


Edmund  Spenser  Speaks.  185 

caught  and  hanged  Lady  Fitz  Gerald  of  Imokelly,  and  reports  in  his 
despatclies  the  execution  of  one  hundred  and  thirty-four  persons,  and 
that  the  pardoned  chiefs  were  bringing  in  the  heads  of  other  rebels 
by  the  sackful.     So  merrily  went  the  reign  of  blood."* 

Come  now,  ye  Planters,  Undertakers,  Adventurers, — or  by  what- 
ever other  name  your  English  brethren  and  cotemporaries  desig- 
nated you  !  The  land  of  Munster  is  ready  for  you.  The  estates  of 
Desmond,  and  those  who  held  under  him,  number  574,038  acres  of 
good  and  profitable  lands;  those  of  the  Eustaces  in  Kildare  amount 
to  7,800  acres. 

Oh!  the  beautiful  country  these  southern  lands  of  Ireland  made 
in  that  age,  in  spite  of  all  the  havoc  and  ruin  of  centuries  of  war- 
fare !  But  who  can  describe  its  desolation  and  the  misery  of  the 
wretched  remnant  in  the  year  of  Grace  1586? — But  one  moment, 
dear  reader,  to  hear  Edmund  Spenser  explain  to  Queen  Elizabeth 
how  ALL  Ieeland  may  be  "reformed," — and  giving  her  as  a  sample 
how  they  had  "reformed"  Munster.  He  is  denouncing  pity  and  mod- 
eration in  the  Governors. 

"  The  longer  that  government  thus  continueth,  in  the  worse 
course  will  the  realm  be;  for  it  is  all  in  vain  that  they  now  strive  and 
endeavour  by  fair  means  and  peaceable  plots  to  redress  the  same, 
without  first  removing  all  these  inconveniences,  and  new-framing  as  it 
were  in  the  forge  all  that  is  worn  out  of  fashion.  For  all  other 
means  will  be  but  as  lost  labour,  by  patching  up  one  hole  to  make 
many;  for  the  Irish  do  strongly  hate  and  abhor  all  reformation  and 
subjection  to  the  English,  by  reason  that  having  been  once  subdued 
by  them,  they  were  thrust  out  of  all  their  possessions.  .  .  .  Every  day 
we  perceive  the  troubles  growing  more  upon  us,  and  one  evil  growing 
upon  another,  inasmuch  as  there  is  no  part  now  sound  or  ascertained; 
but  all  have  their  ears  upright,  waiting  when  the  watchword  shall 
come,  that  they  should  all  arise  generally  into  rebellion,  and  cast 
away  the  English  subjection." 

*  "  The  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  pp.  liO,  141. 


186  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

How  was  rebellion  to  be  prevented,  and  this  total  '^  reformation/' 
civil  and  religious,  to  be  brought  about?     Spenser  answers: 

"  Even  with  the  sword.  For  all  these  evils  must  first  be  cut  away 
with  a  strong  hand  before  any  good  can  be  planted." 

Let  a  strong  army  be  sent  into  Ireland,  such  as  "should  tread 
down  all  that  standeth  before  them  on  foot,  and  lay  on  the  ground 
all  the  stiff-necked  people  of  the  land." 

Establish  powerful  garrisons  here  and  there  in  the  most  central 
and  unassailable  positions.  Pay  the  soldiers  well,  victual  and  clothe 
them  well.  Let  them  not  burthen  or  oppress  the  people.  Eeduce 
the  insurgents  to  starvation  by  cutting  them  off  from  all  relief  and 
destroying  all  their  resources. 

"It  is  not  with  Ireland  as  it  is  with  other  countries,  where  the 
wars  flame  most  in  summer.  But  in  Ireland  the  winter  yieldeth  best 
services,  for  then  the  trees  are  bare  and  naked,  which  used  both  to 
clothe  and  house  the  kerne;  the  ground  is  cold  and  wet,  which  useth 
to  be  his  bedding;  the  air  is  sharp  and  bitter  to  blow  through  his 
naked  sides  and  legs;  the  kine  are  barren  and  without  milk,  which 
useth  to  be  his  only  food,  neither  if  he  kill  them  will  they  yield  him 
any  flesh,  nor  if  he  keep  them  will  they  give  him  food,  besides  being 
all  with  calf  (for  the  most  part),  they  will,  through  much  chasing 
and  driving,  cast  all  their  calves  and  lose  their  milk,  which  should 
relieve  him  the  next  summer." 

The  war  recommended  by  Spenser — -Wright  says — was  a  war  of 
extermination  against  all  who  did  not  make  an  immediate  submission 
to  the  government.  After  the  twenty  days  named  in  the  first  sum- 
mons or  proclamation  to  submit,  "I  would  have  none  received,  but 
left  to  their  fortune  and  miserable  end.  My  reason  is,  for  that  those 
which  will  afterwards  remain  without  are  stout  and  obstinate  rebels, 
such  as  will  never  be  made  dutiful  and  obedient,  nor  brought  to  labour 
or  civil  conversation,  having  once  tasted  that  licentious  life,  and 
being  acquainted  with  spoil  and  outrages,  will  ever  after  be  ready  for 
the  like  occasions,  so  as  there  is  no  hope  of  their  amendment  or 
recovery,  and  they  are  therefore  needful  to  be  cut  off. 


Let  them  learn  from  Munster  Jiow  to  Exterminate.         187 

"The  end  will,  I  assure  you,  be  very  short  and  niucli  sooner  than 
can  be  in  so  great  a  trouble,  as  it  seemeth,  hoped  for, — although. 
there  should  none  of  them  fall  by  the  sword,  nor  be  slain  by  the  sol- 
dier, yet  thus  being  kept  from  manurance,  and  their  cattle  from 
running  abroad,  by  this  hard  restraint  they  will  quickly  consume 
themselves  and  devour  one  another.  The  proof  whereof  I  saw  suffi- 
ciently exampled  in  these  late  wars  of  Munster.  For,  notwithstanding 
that  the  same  was  a  most  rich  and  j)lentiful  country,  full  of  corn  and 
cattle,  that  you  would  have  thought  they  should  have  been  able  to 
stand  long,  yet  ere  one  year  and  a  half  they  were  brought  to  such 
wretchedness,  as  that  any  stoney  heart  would  have  read  the  same. 
Out  of  every  corner  of  the  woods  and  glynns,  they  came  creeping  tovtk 
upon  their  hands,  for  their  legs  could  not  bear  them.  They  looked 
lik?'  anatomies  of  death;  they  spake  like  ghosts  crying  out  of  their 
graves.  Thev  did  eat  the  dead  carrions,  happy  where  they  could  find 
them;  yea,  and  one  another  soon  after,  insomuch  as  the  very  car- 
casses they  spared  not  to  scrape  out  of  their  grave.  And  if  they 
found  a  plot  of  watercress  or  shamrocks,  there  they  flocked  as  to  a 
feast  for  the  time,  yet  not  able  long  to  continue  therewithal!; 
that  in  short  space  there  were  none  almost  left,  and  a  most 
populous  and  plentiful  country  suddenly  left  void  of  man  and 
beast.  Yet  sure  in  all  that  war,  there  perished  not  many  by  the 
sword,  but  all  by  the  extremity  of  famine  which  they  themselves 
had  wrought." 

Surely  it  was  not  commiseration  for  Irish  suffering  that  moved 
Spenser  to  write  that  page:  he  only  wished  to  point  out  to  the  Eng- 
lish government,  in  the  utter  ruin  and  desolation  wrought  in  Munster 
(and  in  which  he  had  borne  his  part),  the  example  of  the  most  suc- 
cessful strategy  to  pursue  in  subduing  the  rebellious  inhabitants  of 
the  other  provinces.  His  was  a  pitiless  spirit,  where  there  was  ques- 
tion of  the  best  moans  of  conquering  or  exterminating  these  indomi- 
table Celtic  Papists. 

In  view,  however,  of  that  "most  populous  and  plentiful  country 
left  void  of  man  and  beast "  by  the  hosts  of  Sir  George  Carew, — we 


188  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

may  like  to  survey  another  picture  of  Ireland  colored  by  tlie  hand  of 
the  same  Edmund  Spenser  : 

"Thus  was  all  that  goodly  country  utterly  wasted!  And  sure  it  is 
yet  a  most  beautiful  and  sweet  country  as  any  is  under  heaven,  being 
stored  throughout  with  many  goodly  rivers,  replenished  with  all  sorts 
of  fish  most  abundantly,  sprinkled  with  many  sweet  islands  and 
goodly  lakes  like  little  inland  seas,  that  will  carry  even  ships  upon 
their  waters;  adorned  with  goodly  Avoods,  even  fit  for  building  of 
houses  and  ships,  so  commodiously  as  that  if  some  princes  in  the 
world  had  them,  they  would  soon  hope  to  be  lords  of  all  the  seas,  and 
ere  long  of  all  the  world;  also  full  of  very  good  ports  and  havens 
opening  upon  England,  as  inviting  us  to  come  unto  them,  to  see  what 
excellent  commodities  that  country  can  afford,  besides  the  soil  itself 
most  fertile,  fit  to  yield  all  kind  of  fruit  that  shall  be  committed 
thereunto.  And,  lastl}',  the  heavens  most  mild  and  temperate, 
though  somewhat  more  moist  than  the  parts  toward  the  west." 

"And  here  the  question  may  perhaps  be  asked,  how  comes  it  that 
Mr.  Froude  tells  us  nothing  of  Ralegh's  doings  in  Ireland  and  of  his 
Irish  policy  ?  The  one  vague  reference  to  him  as  having  accompanied 
Lord  Grey  to  the  west  of  Ireland  in  1580,  is  all  he  tells  us  about 
Kalegh.  Mr.  Froude  says  not  a  word  about  his  being  for  twenty 
years  the  favourite  adviser  of  the  Queen  on  Irish  affairs;  not  a  word 
about  the  special  training  she  desired,  under  her  royal  warrant  of 
February  1582,  that  he  should  continue  to  receive  in  Irish  affairs; 
not  a  word  about  his  successful  intrigue  against  Ormond,  and  barely 
a  word  about  the  reward  he  got  of  forty  thousand  acres  in  Munster. 
Of  his  doings  as  Deputy  President  of  Munster,  as  Governor  of  Cork, 
as  Mayor  of  Youghal,  as  the  daring  leader  of  the  English  soldiers  in 
many  a  raid  from  the  mouth  of  the  Blackwater  to  the  sources  of  the 
Lee,  Mr.  Froude  is  also  silent.  But  on  the  last  and  not  least  im- 
portant point — the  result  of  the  policy  so  recommended  and  enforced 
— Mr.  Froude  speaks  out.  '  The  entire  province  of  Munster,'  he 
says,  '  was  utterly  depopulated.  Hecatombs  of  helpless  creatures, 
the  aged,  and   the  sick,  and  the  blind,  the  young  mother  and  the 


The  Division  of  the  Spoils.  189 

babe  at  lier  breast,  had  fallen  under  the  English  sword;  and  though 
the  authentic  details  of  the  struggle  have  been  forgotten,  the  memory 
of  a  vague  horror  remains  imprinted  in  the  national  traditions.' 

"The  contemporary  chronicle.  Hooker's  Supplement  to  Holinshed, 
which  is  so  often  quoted  by  Mr.  Fronde,  describes  all  this  and  gloats 
over  it  as  a  notable  and  rare  example  of  a  people  being  Justly  rooted 
out,  as  the  true  and  rational  settlement  of  the  Irish  difficulty. 
Hooker  appi'opriately  dedicates  his  record  of  those  Irish  wars  to  Sir 
"Walter  Ealegh,  on  the  ground  that  the  '  right  worthie  and  honorable 
gentleman  and  knight'  was  'a  partie  and  a  dooer,  a  painful  and 
a  faithful  servitor  '  in  those  transactions,  the  effect  of  which  he  thus 
sums  up  in  the  same  '  Epistle  Dedicatorie': — ^The  common  people 
such  as  escaped  the  sword  all  for  the  most  part  are  perished  of 
famine  or  fled  the  countrie.  The  land  itself,  from  being  verie  fertile, 
is  waxed  barren,  yeelding  nor  corne  nor  fruits — the  pastures  without 
cattell:  nothing  there  to  be  scene  but  miserie  and  desolation.'"* 

"Are  these  terrible  traditions  all  that  remain  of  Ealegh's  days  in 
Ireland  ?  How  long  are  they  to  remain  ?  AVhat  has  been  their  effect 
in  a  country  where  the  two  main  elements  of  social  order — the 
religion  of  the  people  and  the  national  sentiment — have  not  been 
allowed  to  play  their  legitimate  part  in  the  Government?  Are  those 
traditions  grov.-ing,  as  political  agents,  less  powerful  with  the  in- 
creasing strength  of  popular  spirit  in  Europe?  How  far  does  a  frank 
admission  of  their  vitality  and  their  force  enable  us  to  look  into  the 
future  ?  "  * 

In  1584  an  Irish  Parliament  summoned  by  Sir  John  Perrot,  now 
Lord  Deputy,  passed  two  acts  of  attainder,  in  order  to  give  to  the 
confiscation  of  the  escheated  lands  a  varnish  of  legality.  Therein 
were  mentioned  one  hundred  and  forty  knights  and  gentlemen,  all 
Irish  Catholics  of  both  English  and  Celtic  blood. 

The  lands  confiscated  were  divided  into  seigniories  of  from  4,000 
to  12,000  acres,  "to  be  held  in  fee  of  the  Crown  at  a  quit-rent  of 

*  "  Kalegh  in  Ii*eland,"  c.  xxxiii.  t  Ibid.,  c.  xxxiv. 


190  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

threepence  per  acre  in  Limerick  and  Kerry,  and  twopence  per  acre 
in  Cork  and  Waterford.  Xo  rent  was  to  be  payable  till  A.  D. 
1590,  and  for  three  years  after  that  only  half-rent;  for  ten 
years  the  undertakers  were  to  export  their  produce  duty  free. 
Younger  sons  and  brothers  were  invited  to  come  over  from  England 
to  take  up  the  land;  and  large  tracts  were  given  to  those  who  had 
been  engaged  in  the  war.  The  conditions  of  the  grants  were  that  no 
native  Irish  should  be  taken  as  tenants;  that  the  owner  of  every  300 
acres  should  provide  one  horseman  and  one  infantry  soldier;  that 
farmers,  hop-planters,  gardeners,  wheelwrights,  smiths,  masons,  car- 
penters, thatchers,  tilers,  tailors,  shoemakers,  and  butchers,  should 
be  procured  from  England  by  the  undertakers,  and  settled  on  the 
land;  that  each  grantee  of  12,000  acres  should  plant  on  portions  of 
his  estate  eighty-six  different  families,  of  which  twenty  were  to  be 
freeholders,  forty  copyholders,  and  the  rest  small  tenants  of  the 
laboring  class,  and  should  retain  1,600  acres  for  his  own  demesne 
lands.  Every  precaution  was  taken  to  keep  the  colonists  from  amal- 
gamating with  the  remnant  of  the  native  population,  who  were  to  be 
cleared  out  of  the  plains  into  the  upland  country.  The  colony  was 
to  be  planted  on  the  profitable  land  only." 

Who  got  the  land  ?  About  one-half  was  restored  to  the  former 
owners  who  had  'friends  at  Court';  good  care  being  taken  that 
they  should,  if  possible,  be  made  to  conform  with  the  State  Religion, 
or  that  they  should  hold  out  some  fair  promise  of  conforming.  Forty 
English  gentlemen  obtained  one  or  more  seigniories.  Walter  Ea- 
leigb,  who  was  high  in  favor  with  Elizabeth,  got  no  less  than  42,000 
acres  along  the  valley  of  the  Blackwater,  with  the  Town  of  Youghal, 
its  college,  monasteries,  and  the  monastery  of  Lismore.  Among 
other  large  grantees  were  Arthur  Eabins,  with  18,000  acres  in  the 
County  Cork;  Sir  William  Herbert  and  Sir  George  Bouchier,  with 
13,000  acres  in  Kerry  and  Limerick,  respectively;  Fane  Beecher, 
Hugh  Worth,  Arthur  Hyde,  and  Henry  Billingslej^,  who  each  received 
13,000  acres  in  Cork  and  Limerick;  Sir  William  Courtenay,  Sir 
Edward  Fitton,  and  Sir  Christopher  Hatton,  who  obtained  10,500 


The  Irish  Peo]jle  did  not  sanction  the  Robbery.  191 

acres  in  Limerick  and  Waterford.  Amongst  others,  Ormonde  got 
3,000  acres  in  Tipperary,  and  Sir  Wareliam  St.  Leger  and  Edmund 
Spenser  6,000  acres  and  3,000  acres  respectively  in  County  Cork." 

How  did  the  remnants  of  the  Irish  population  take  this  robbery 
of  their  lands  ?  They  never  submitted  to  it.  They  made  life  in- 
tolerable both  to  the  new  landlords  and  to  their  tenants.  Coercion, 
suasion,  bribery,  coaxing  had  to  be  used,  and  used  in  vain  to  make 
them  work  for  tlie  usurpers  of  the  lands  of  Munster,  when  they  had 
frightened  away  the  few  farmers  and  artisans  who  ventured  to  come 
over  from  England.  They  banded  themselves  into  "  Kobin  Hood " 
societies  who  held  the  woods  and  sallied  forth  to  burn  and  destroy. 
Against  them  the  settlers  employed  the  sword  and  the  halter.  They 
retaliated  with  fire  and  steel,  never  slumbering  in  their  watchfulness 
for  the  fitting  opportunity  to  destroy  or  expel  those  who  had  done  so 
much  to  exterminate  the  Celts  and  their  families. 

Shall  we  blame  these  untameable  defenders  of  their  native  land, 
of  their  ruined  homes  and  altars?  No!  not  so  long  as  the  Bible  holds 
up  to  our  admiration  the  heroic  father  of  the  Macchabees  and  his 
noble  sons, — so  long  as  the  exploits  of  Debborah  and  Judith  are  glo- 
rified in  the  Divine  Book, — No!  not  so  long  as  England  recalls  with 
hearty  praise  the  deeds  of  the  Spanish  Guerillas  in  the  early  years  of 
this  century,  or  so  long  as  we  Americans  yearly  recite  the  resistance 
of  Washington  and  his  generals,  and  of  the  people  of  the  confederated 
colonies,  to  British  misrule  and  tyranny. 

Never,  since  the  world  began,  was  national  struggle  more  legiti- 
mate or  more  sacred  than  that  of  Ireland  against  Elizabeth. 

And  now  comes  the  Second  Act  in  the  great  Irish  Tragedy  under 
Elizabeth. 

She  was  exasperated  by  the  utter  failure  of  all  her  plans  for  the 
colonization  of  Munster.  Her  armies,  her  fleets,  all  the  treasure 
and  bloodshed,  the  destruction  of  life  and  property,  the  depopulation 
of  the  country, — all  had  proved  unavailing.  The  outlawed  and 
hunted  Kekne  of  Munster  prevailed  over  all  the  statesmanship  of 
England,  all  the  designing  of  Dublin  Castle. 


193  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

But  Dublin  Castle  has  infinite  resources  in  the  very  absence  of 
CoNSCiEN'CE  from  its  councils,  backed  by  the  land-hunger  of  the 
fortune-hunters,  the  blind  hatred  of  the  Celt  by  the  Saxon,  and  the 
religious  fanaticism  which  was  the  offspring  in  Ireland  of  both  of 
these  passions.  "The  only  result  of  the  ten  years'  desolation  (says 
Mr.  Walpole)  was  the  enriching  of  a  few  adventurers  and  a  knot  of 
Elizabeth's  courtiers."  The  result  was  not  at  all  pleasing  to  the  fam- 
ished hordes  disappointed  of  their  prey.  They  will  manage  to  bring 
about  a  second  war,  and  with  it  the  satisfaction  of  all  their  desires. 

Was,  then,  the  War  with  Tyrone,  and  the  insurrection  which 
broke  out  in  all  the  provinces  in  1595,  the  mere  fruit  of  Irish  unrest 
and  the  consequence  of  the  inveterate  hatred  of  the  Irishman  for  his 
English  tyrant?  or  was  it  deliberately  planned  and  provoked  by  the 
persons  who  governed  Ireland  for  the  Queen  ? 

"After  the  suppression  of  the  rebellion  in  Munster," — says  the 
historian  we  have  been  quoting, — "there  was  an  interval  of  compara- 
tive peace  in  Ireland,  which  might  have  been  prolonged  until  the 
tendency  toward  improvement  which  had  been  growing  in  the  coun- 
try had  borne  satisfactory  fruit, — had  not  the  blind  folly  of  the  Eng- 
lish Government  precipitated  a  fresh  quarrel.  The  south  had  been 
'pacified'  by  fire  and  sword;  so  had  Connaught  by  the  merciless 
sternness  of  the  President,  Sir  Richard  Bingham.  There  had  been 
no  concerted  rising  in  Connaught,  the  great  Earls  of  Thomond  and 
Clanrickarde  had  been  steadily  loyal  to  the  Crown;  but  there  had 
been  much  smouldering  disaffection  among  the  cadets  of  the  house  of 
Bourke,  which  from  time  to  time  burst  out  into  open  insurrection, 
and  which  had  equally  from  time  to  timio  been  suppressed  by  mas- 
sacre. .  .  . 

"In  Ulster  the  chiefs  were  loyal,  and  both  trusted  and  respected 
Perrot  (the  Lord  Deputy),  Avho,  though  sternly  severe  with  those 
whom  he  considered  traitors,  was  animated  by  a  strong  spirit  of  jus- 
tice. He  even  persuaded  them,  as  he  had  persuaded  the  lords  of 
Connaught,  to  agree  to  the  payment  of  an  annual  tax  for  the  support 
of  eleven  hundred  men  in  Ulster.  .  .  .     Sir  John  Perrot  had  many 


Sir  John  Ferrot  Recalled.  193 

enemies.  He  was  a  man  of  hasty  temper,  who  quarreled  with  liis 
subordinates.  He  had  sent  a  challenge  to  Bingham,  who  detested 
him  for  endeavoring  to  curb  his  severities  in  Connaught;  he  had 
knocked  down  Sir  Henry  Bagnal  at  the  council  board  .  .  .  ;  he  made 
an  enemy  of  Adam  Loftus,  the  archbishop,  by  proposing  to  endow  a 
university  in  Dublin  out  of  the  revenues  of  the  cathedral  of  St.  Pat- 
rick, which  had  fallen  to  Loftus  and  his  kinsmen  as  their  share  in  the 
spoil  of  the  monasteries.  These  and  others  were  ever  ready  to  whis- 
per slanders  of  the  lord-deputy  to  the  Queen.  It  was  always  the  fate 
of  Irish  deputies  to  have  the  ground  cut  from  under  them  by  the 
intrigues  of  the  Irish  council.  .  .  .  Perrot  was  recalled  to  eat  liis 
heart  out  and  die  in  the  Tower." 

He  was  the  best  governor  Ireland  had  known  for  ages,  and  was 
sincerely  regretted.  But  neither  the  Irish  Privy  Council,  nor  the 
English,  nor  Elizabeth  herself,  whose  ear  at  this  time  was  only  open 
to  AV alter  Ealeigh  and  his  pestilential  clique, — wanted  such  men  as 
Sir  John  Perrot.  Just  and  honest  men,  who  sought  the  good  of 
the  country  and  the  happiness  of  the  people,  were  not  the  men  for 
Dublin  Castle  and  Adam  Loftus. 

Sir  William  Fitzwilliam,  who  succeeded  Perrot,  was  cruel  and 
avaricious.  "  Perrot's  policy  of  conciliation  was  thrown  to  the  winds, 
and  every  opportunity  was  recklessly  taken  by  the  incompetent  new 
viceroy  to  exasperate  the  natives." 

The  son  of  the  Earl  of  Tyrconnell,— the  Red  Hugh  O'Donnell 
of  the  war  of  1595, — had,  by  an  act  of  unpardonable  treachery,  been 
kidnapped  and  confined  for  two  years  in  Dublin  Castle.  It  was  the 
act  of  Sir  John  Perrot,  who,  in  this,  was  only  pursuing  a  mild  form 
of  the  policy  so  often  resorted  to  by  other  viceroys. 

In  Fermanagh  the  Maguires  and  their  people  were  goaded  into 
madness  by  the  raids  of  Bingham  from  Connaught,  and  the  English 
(Seneschal  of  ]\Ionaghan  from  the  other.  The  cattle  of  the  Sept 
were  carried  off,  the  villages  burned,  the  people  slaughtered. 
In  one  of  these  raids  Edmund  Maguire,  the  chief,  was  slain. 
And  the  English  soldiers,  cutting  off  his  head,  kicked  it  about 
13 


194  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

as  a  football,  compelling  some  of  his  relatives  and  tribesmen  to 
witness  the  sport. 

The  six  years  of  Fitzwilliam's  misgovernment,  oppression,  and 
peculation,  ended  in  3  594.  Complaints  and  remonstrances  were  sent 
to  the  Qiieen  from  all  parts  by  the  aggrieved  Irish  Chieftains.  But 
the  Privy  Council  in  Dublin  took  good  care  that  they  never  crossed 
the  sea;  and  from  Ireland  no  man  could  go  to  England  without  a 
special  permit  from  the  Lord  Deputy. 

Ked  Hugh  O'Donnell  escaped  from  his  confinement,  it  is  said, 
through  the  connivance  of  Fitzwilliam,  who  had  received  a  hand- 
some bribe.  He  was  burning  with  revenge.  He  found  Fermanagh 
in  a  flame,  and  all  the  northern  Septs  oppressed  by  sheriffs  and 
worried  by  the  government  officials.  Connaught  was  watching  for 
an  opportunity  to  throw  off  the  yoke  of  Bingham. 

Hugh  O'Neill,  who  was  brother-in-law  to  Ked  Hugh  O'Donnell, 
had  been  in  his  boyhood  spirited  away  to  the  English  Court,  where 
they  vainly  endeavored  to  make  a  Protestant  of  him.  He  was  unwil- 
ling, at  first,  to  provoke  a  war  with  England.  But  circumstances 
proved  stronger  than  his  firm  conviction  of  England's  superior  might, 
or  his  reluctance  to  engage,  or  to  have  his  country  engage,  in  an 
armed  contest  with  her.  His  first  wife  having  died,  he  induced  the 
daughter  of  Sir  Henry  Bagnal,  lord  marshal  of  Ulster,  to  elope  with 
him  and  marry  him.  This  made  a  mortal  enemy  of  Bagnal.  From 
that  moment  the  latter  joined  hands  with  Adam  Loftus  and  the 
Privy  Council,  and  they  again  and  again  accused  O'Neill  of  treason- 
able intentions  and  conspiracy,  taking  every  precaution  that  his 
answers  should  never  reach  the  Queen. 

Believing  in  O'Neill's  guilt  and  in  the  existence  of  a  treasonable 
conspiracy,  Elizabeth  reinforced  her  army  in  Ireland  by  three  thou- 
sand choice  troops  under  Sir  John  Norris,  brother  to  the  President  of 
Munster.  Thus  did  the  Government  employ  in  statesmanship  the 
process  so  well  known  to  logicians  of  forcing  a  needed  conclusion 
from  their  own  premises— /"ftct^m  te  bene  venire:  they  wanted  a 
general   Irish  war,   because  they  wanted  a  general  confiscation  of 


The  Irish  Catholics  a  Nation:   not  a  Party,  195 

Irish  lands;   and   they  compelled   circumstances   to   bring   on   that 
war. 

It  is  useless  to  deny  that  the  Religious  Grievance  at  this  time  in 
Ireland  was  not  an  intolerable  one,  and  becoming  more  and  more 
felt  in  every  part  of  the  Kingdom.  "Tyrone  was  now  beginning  to 
see  that  there  were  two  divergent  courses  open  to  him:  he  must 
either  abide  by  the  Government  which  distrusted  him,  and  was 
swayed  by  Bagnal,  who  had  vowed  his  destruction;  or  he  must  throw 
in  his  lot  with  the  northern  chieftains,  who  would  welcome  him  as  a 
mighty  acquisition  to  their  cause.  He  was  rapidly  drifting  in  the 
latter  direction.  He  knew  that  if  he  was  to  hope  for  success  there 
must  be  union  amongst  the  Irish,  and  that  a  determined  effort  must 
be  made  to  obtain  the  hojia  fide  assistance  of  Spain.  O'Donnell, 
since  his  escape,  had  been  at  open  war  with  the  Government,  and 
had  repeatedly  endeavored  to  induce  his  brother-in-law  to  join  him; 
his  counsels  at  length  prevailed;  and  these  tM'o  now  set  themselves  to 
work  to  form  an  extensive  confederation  against  England." 

With  such  historians  as  Wright,  and  even  with  Walpole,  who  fol- 
lows AVright  in  his  narrative,  while  differing  much  from  him  in 
spirit, — it  is  customary  to  treat  the  Catholics  as  if  they  were  only  "a 
party,"  and  sometimes  even  "a  mere  faction"  in  Ireland.  From  the 
year  1534,  when  Henry  VIII.  began  his  open  rupture  with  the  Holy 
See,  and  when,  with  the  exception  of  Ormonde,  not  one  Irisliman  of 
any  note  had  sided  with  the  King,  and  not  one  Irishman,  perhaps,  in 
all  Ireland  professed  the  faith  of  Luther  or  Calvin, — Wright  speaks 
of  the  Popish  party,  and  the  Popish  faction,  the  recusant  faction. 

It  would  seem  to  any  person  of  sound  judgment  and  moderate 
mind,  that  a  whole  people  can  never  be  either  a  party  or  a  faction. 
It  is  also  most  unjust  to  designate  the  loyalty  to  the  Holy  See  of  peo- 
ple, priests,  prelates,  and  nobles, — as  treason.  It  is  the  distinctive 
feature  of  Catholicism  to  believe  in  the  Papal  supremacy  as  of  divine , 
institution,  and  to  cling  to  communion  with  Eome  as  to  the  only 
means  of  external  union  between  all  the  members  of  Christ's  Church- 
That  proscribed,  hunted,  hanged,  drawn  and  quartered  as  priests. 


196  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

prelates,  and  laymen  were  under  Elizabeth  for  this  conscientious 
loyalty  to  the  Central  Authority  in  Christendom,  it  would  be  other- 
wise than  natural  that,  in  the  death-struggle  going  on  in  Ireland 
between  two  creeds  and  two  races,  the  oppressed  race  and  the  per- 
secuted professors  of  the  old  creed  should  invoke  the  sympathy  and 
the  aid  of  the  Pope  and  of  all  Catholic  peoples, — is  apparent  to  any 
Judicial  mind. 

"A  solemn  engagement  was  entered  into  between  all  the  Confed- 
erates to  stand  by  each  other,  and  to  make  no  submission  and  accept 
no  terms  which  did  not  include  them  all.  An  appeal  was  distinctly 
made  to  Eoman  Catholics  as  Roman  Catholics  to  treat  the  question  as 
a  religious  one,  and  to  join  the  movement  in  defence  of  their  faith. 
Tyrone  and  O'Donnell  wrote  joint  letters  to  Philip,  to  Don  Carlos, 
and  to  Don  Juan  de  Aguila,  pressing  them  to  send  them  troops  '  to 
restore  the  faith  of  the  Church,  and  to  secure  to  the  King  a  Catholic 
Kingdom.'  "* 

It  went  hard  with  the  English  forces  during  the  first  stages  in  the 
war.  Spain  sent  timely  aid.  In  August,  1598,  Sir  Henry  Bagnal 
with  4,000  men  was  defeated  on  the  river  Callan,  perishing  himself 
on  the  field  with  2,000  of  his  followers.  The  Provinces  were  all  up 
in  arms,  the  nobles  of  both  races,  with  few  exceptions,  joining  the 
insurgents.  Elizabeth,  alarmed,  but  determined  to  crush  this  rebeU 
lion,  sent  over  a  magnificent  army  of  20,000  infantry  and  3,000  horse, 
under  the  command  of  Essex,  her  favorite.  The  Castle  influence 
was  too  much  for  him:  he  was  persuaded  to  march  into  Munster 
instead  of  attacking  the  Confederates  in  the  north.  The  insurgents, 
on  his  way,  declined  a  pitched  battle,  harassing  the  Earl's  columns, 
and  inflicting  terrible  losses,  which  soon  reduced  his  forces  by  one 
half.  He  sought  to  gain  by  negotiation,  what  he  could  not  by  strat- 
egy; had  a  secret  interview  with  O'Neill,  which  the  Officials  in  Dub- 
lin and  the  jealous  courtiers  in  England  turned  into  a  treasonable 
conspiracy.     Elizabeth  wrote  to  him,  indignantly  saying,  that  "to 


*  "  The  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p,  156. 


What  a  Hell  upon  3arth  EUzahetli  had  created.  197 

trust  tliis  traitor  upon  oath,  is  to  trust  a  cleril  upon  liis  religion."  It 
would  be  curious  to  know  what,  at  bottom,  constituted  lier  religion. 

Essex  gave  up  the  contest  in  Ireland  and  went  to  England  to  expi- 
ate on  the  scaffold  his  own  incapacity  or  lack  of  success. 

Then  entered  upon  the  scene  tlie  Puritan  Mount  joy,  who  could 
fight  as  well  as  write,  and  whose  strategy  was  no  holiday  parading. 
The  new  forces  which  he  brought  with  him  were  admirably  distrib- 
uted on  land  and  sea,  and  placed  under  men  who  could  handle  them, 
and  who  perfectly  understood  the  war  of  extermination  which  was 
now  the  order  of  the  day. 

The  Spaniards  in  vain  sent  a  large  fleet  with  3,000  soldiers,  who 
landed  at  Kinsale,  and  were  soon  besieged  there  by  Mountjoy  and  Sir 
George  Carew,  President  of  Munster.  The  Lord  Deputy  had  sum- 
moned to  his  aid  every  man  he  could  dispose  of.  O'jSTeill  and  O'Don- 
nell  also  hastened  from  the  North,  baffling  Mountjoy's  attempts  to 
stop  them  on  their  march,  and  placing  the  English  army  at  Kinsale 
between  two  fires.  But  treason  was  at  work  in  O'Neill's  councils. 
His  plan  of  attack  was  revealed  to  the  English  commander,  who  soon 
made  the  Confederates  assume  the  defensive,  broke  through  their 
lines  and  drove  them  in  utter  route  from  the  field.  O'Neill  never  ral- 
lied his  scattered  followers,  and  O'Donnell  fled  to  the  Court  of  Spain 
to  solicit  fresh  aid  for  his  country.  Thither  an  emissary  of  Mountjoy 
followed  him,  and  cut  him  off  by  poison.  In  1603, — just  as  Elizabeth 
was  breathing  her  last, — O'Neill  concluded  with  the  Lord  Deputy  the 
Treaty  of  Mellifont,  by  which  he  submitted  to  the  Crown,  was  for- 
given, his  followers  amnestied,  and  religious  liberty  promised, — a 
promise  which  never  was  kept. 

If  the  spirits  of  the  departed,  of  those  especially  who  wield  upon 
earth  the  power  of  doing  to  humanity  incalculable  good,  or  of  causing 
incalculable  misery,  are  sent  by  Him  who  is  Judge  of  the  whole  earth, 
to  contemplate  the  scene  of  their  good  or  evil  deeds, — what  a  hell  it 
must  have  been  for  the  spirit  of  Elizabeth  to  survey  Ireland  as  her 
lieutenants  had  made  it  at  her  death  in  1G03  ! 

Let  English  and  Protestant  pens  describe  the  awful  scene. 


198  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

"The  rebellion  in  Munster  was  stamped  out  with  awful  ferocity. 
No  quarter  was  given  on  either  side.  The  returning  Planters  and 
Carew's  flying  columns  laid  waste  the  whole  country,  '  not  leaving  be- 
hind man  or  beast,  corn  or  cattle.'  .  .  .  Tyrone,  though  not  yet  a 
hunted  fugitive,  saw  that  all  hope  of  final  success  was  gone.  His 
country  was  so  wasted  that  his  people  were  dying  of  starvation  by 
hundreds;  the  country  was  strewed  with  unburied  carcasses;  while  an 
active  and  determined  enemy  was  gradually  drawing  the  net  more 
closely  round  him.  .  .  . 

"  The  power  of  the  Irish  was  completely  broken  by  the  process  of 
starvation.  The  system  pursued  both  in  the  south  and  in  the  north 
of  destroying  the  crops,  removed  the  wbole  source  of  sustenance  on 
which  the  mass  of  the  people  depended.  To  add  to  the  loss  of  the 
food  at  hand,  Elizabeth's  practice  of  debasing  the  coin  had  doubled 
and  trebled  the  price  of  every  purchasable  article,  and  a  fatal  pesti- 
lence had  followed  upon  the  famine.  .  The  jjeople  in  Ulster  died  of 
hunger  by  the  thousands."  * 

So,  the  plan  drawn  up  by  Edmund  Spenser  for  the  Queen  and  her 
Government,  for  the  instruction,  indeed,  of  officers  and  soldiers,  and 
to  feed  the  anti-Irish  passions  of  the  English  nation,  were  now  liter- 
ally carried  out.  Pregnant  as  is  the  passage  just  quoted, — it  cannot 
convey  a  correct  idea  of  all  the  methods  used  to  desolate  the  land  and 
destroy  all  life  in  it  during  the  terrible  years  of  Mountjoy,  Carew, 
and  Chichester's  joint  rule. 

Once  for  all  the  story  must  be  told  by  the  English  themselves. 
Even  though  they  suppress  very  many  things,  and  soften  the  colors 
wliich  they  use,  the  picture  is  as  graphic  as  the  descriptions  of 
Dante's  Circles  in  the  Inferno. 

1600.  "It  was  in  the  month  of  August,  that,  having  taken 
measures  of  protecting  against  any  attack  from  Ulster,  whither  he  an- 
nounced his  intention  of  making  a  general  hosting,  .  .  .  Mountjoy 
marched  with  an  army  of  somewhat  more  than  six  hundred  men,  of 

*  "  The  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p.  169, 


The  Greater  Part  of  Ireland  a  Desert.  199 

whom  sixty  only  were  cavalry,  into  Offaly  and  Leix,  counties  which 
had  long  been  in  the  undisturbed  possession  of  the  Irish,  and  wliich 
therefore  offered  rich  plunder  to  the  English  troops.  The  army 
committed  great  havoc,  retaliating  on  the  Irish  with  the  same  devasta- 
tion which  had  been  so  often  perpetrated  by  the  insurgents  in  other 
parts.  These  districts  were  the  chief  supports  of  the  rebels  of  Lein- 
ster,  and  it  was  therefore  a  part  of  Mountjoy's  policy  to  destroy  their 
provisions.  'Oiir  captains,'  says  Moryson,  'and  by  their  example  {for 
it  was  otherwise  painful)  the  common  soldiers  cut  down  ivith  their 
swords  all  the  rebels'  corn  to  the  value  of  £10,000  and  upwards,  the 
only  means  by  which  they  were  to  live,  and  to  keep  their  bonaghts  or 
hired  soldiers.  It  seemed  incredible,  that  by  so  barbarous  inhabi- 
tants the  ground  should  be  so  manured,  the  fields  so  orderly  fenced, 
the  towns  &o  frequently  (populously)  inhabited,  and  the  highways  and 
paths  so  well  beaten,  as  the  Lord  Deputy  here  found  them.  The 
reason  whereof  was  that  the  Queen's  forces,  during  these  wars,  never 
till  then  came  among  them.'  "  * 

1601.  "By  this  time  the  greater  part  of  Ireland,  by  continual 
wasting  and  spoiling,  had  been  reduced  to  a  mere  desert,  and  the 
insurgents,  deprived  of  supplies  at  home,  were  compelled  to  depend 
upon  importation  from  abroad;  and  this  they  were  enabled  to  pro- 
cure with  the  Queen's  own  treasure,  a  large  portion  of  which  fell 
into  their  hands.  ...  It  was  found  that,  by  the  regular  payment 
of  the  army  in  sterling  money,  an  alarming  quantity  went  into  the 
hands  of  the  insurgeiits,  either  directly  by  inroads  and  plunder,  or 
indirectly,  through  commerce,  and  was  used  in  procuring  from  the 
continent  a  regular  supply  of  arms,  ammunition,  and  provisions. 
The  government  hit  upon  an  extraordinary  method  for  remedying 
this  inconvenience,  which  the  Queen  is  said  to  have  adopted  with 
great  reluctance.  It  was  no  less  than  the  total  exchange  of  the  ster- 
ling coin,  then  iTsed  in  Ireland,  for  a  base  currency.  .  .  .  This  new 
scheme  reduced  the  rebels  to  greater  distress  than  ever.  .  .  .     Lord 

*  Wright,  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  vol.  i.,  p.  550, 


200  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Mountjoy  kept  the  soldiers  in  continual  employment  against  the 
rebels  in  different  quarters,  so  that  they  made  up  in  some  measure 
by  plunder  for  the  real  deficiency  in  pay  caused  by  the  change. 
Thus  the  desolation  of  the  country  was  increased.  ..."  * 

"  In  a  letter  written  from  Xewry  to  the  lords  of  the  English 
council  the  lord-deputy  gives,  in  a  few  words,  a  picture  of  the  ex- 
terminating warfare  in  which  he  was  now  engaged.  'Tyi'one/ 
he  savs,  '  is  already  beaten  out  of  his  country,  and  lives  in  a 
part  of  O'Kane's,  a  place  of  incredible  fastness,  where,  though  it 
be  impossible  to  do  him  any  great  hurt  so  long  as  he  shall  be  able 
to  keep  any  force  about  him,  the  ways  to  him  being  inaccessible  with 
an  army,  yet  by  lying  about  him,  as  we  mean  to  do,  we  shall  in  short 
time  put  him  to  his  uttermost  extremity,  and  if  not  light  upon  his 
person,  yet  force  him  to  fly  the  kingdom.  In  the  meantime  we  can 
assure  your  lordships  thus  much,  tJiat  from  O'Kane's  country,  where 
no'iv  he  liveth,  vjhich  is  to  the  northward  nf  his  oivn  country  of  Tyrone, 
we  have  left  none  to  give  us  ojjposition,  nor  of  late  have  seen  any  hut 
dead  carcasses,  merely  starved  for  want  of  meat,  of  which  kind  we 
found  many  in  divers  places  as  we  passed.'  "  \ 

Intelligence  having  been  brought  Mountjoy  that  O'Neill  had  quit- 
ted this  lurking  place  and  fled  into  Fermanagh,  a  district  still  in  a 
State  of  insurrection, — the  Lord  Deputy  thereupon  "resolved,  first, 
to  spoil  all  the  country  of  lyrone,  and  to  banish  all  the  inhabitants 
from  thence,  enjoining  such  of  them  as  would  become  subjects  to  live 
on  the  south  side  of  Blackwater,  so  that  if  Tyrone  returned  he  should 
find  nothing  in  the  country  but  the  Queen's  garrisons."  X 

"So  effective  was  this  ruthless  policy  of  destruction"— says  Wright 
— "  that  Mountjoy,  in  a  letter  written  on  the  12th  of  September 
(1602),  the  day  after  his  return  to  Newry,  acknowledges  that  not  only 
in  Tyrone  itself,  which  had  been  now  reduced  to  a  desert,  but  in  the 
surrounding  countries,  he  had  \found  everywhere  men  dead  of  fam- 
ine, insomuch  that  O'Hagan  protested  unto  us,  that  between  Tullag- 
hoo-e  and  Toome  there  lay  a  thousand  dead,  and  that  since  our  first 
*  Wright,  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  i.,  559.         +  Ibidem,  p.  583.         J  Ibidem,  p.  584. 


The  Famine-Mad.  201 

drawing  this  year  to  Blackwater  there  were  above  three  thousand 
starved  in  Tyrone.'  "  * 

Wright  in  a  foot-note  thus  corroborates  the  assertion  of  Mount- 
joy.  "To  give  some  idea  of  the  horrors  of  this  Irish  war,  we  have 
only  to  repeat  the  facts  stated  by  Moryson,  an  eye-witness,  and  our 
only  autliority  for  the  particulars  of  Mountjoy's  proceedings  in  the 
north.  Moryson,  describing  the  conclusion  of  the  war,  ssiys:  'Now, 
because  I  have  often  made  mention  formerly  of  destroying  the  rebels' 
corn,  and  using  all  means  to  famish  them,  let  me  by  two  or  three 
examples  show  the  miserable  estate  to  which  the  rebels  were  thereby 
brought. 

"  'Sir  Arthur  Cliiehester,  Sir  Richard  Moryson,  and  the  other 
commanders  of  the  forces  sent  against  Brian  Mac  Art  (O'Neill)  afore- 
said, in  their  return  homewards,  saw  a  most  horrible  spectacle  of 
three  children  (whereof  the  eldest  was  not  above  ten  years  old),  all 
eating  and  gnawing  with  their  teeth  the  entrails  of  their  dead  mother, 
upon  whose  flesh  they  had  fed  twenty  days  past;  and  having  eaten 
all  from  the  feet  upwards  to  the  bare  bones,  roasting  it  continually 
by  a  slow  fire,  were  now  come  to  the  eating  of  her  entrails  in  like 
sort  roasted,  yet  not  divided  from  the  body,  being  as  yet  raw. 

"  '  Former  mention  hath  been  made  in  the  Lord  Deputy's  Letters, 
of  carcasses  scattered  in  many  places,  all  dead  of  famine.  And  no 
doubt  the  famine  was  so  great,  as  the  rebel  soldiers  taking  all  the 
common  people  had  to  feed  upon,  and  hardly  living  thereupon  (so  as 
they  besides  fed  not  only  on  hawks,  kites,  and  unsavoury  birds  of 
prey,  but  on  horseflesh,  and  other  things  unfit  for  man's  feeding), 
the  common  sort  of  the  rebels  were  driven  to  unspeakable  extremities 
(beyond  the  record  of  most  histories  that  ever  I  did  read  in  that 
kind),  the  ample  relating  whereof  were  an  infinite  task,  yet  will  I  not 
pass  it  over  without  adding  some  few  instances. 

"  '  Captain  Trever  and  many  honest  gentlemen  lying  in  the 
Newry  can  witness,  that  some  old  women  of  those  parts  were  used  to 
make  a  fire  in  the  fields,  and  divers  little  children  driving  out  the 

*  "  Wright,  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  vol.  i.,  p.  5S5. 


202  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

cattle  in  the  cold  mornings  and  coming  hither  to  warm  them,  were 
by  them  surprised,  killed,  and  eaten,  which  at  last  was  discovered  by 
a  great  girl  breaking  from  them  by  strength  of  her  body;  and 
Captain  Trever  sending  out  soldiers  to  know  the  truth,  they  found 
the  children's  skulls  and  bones,  and  apprehended  the  old  women, 
who  were  executed  for  the  fact. 

"  '  The  Captains  of  Carrickfergus  and  the  adjacent  garrisons  of 
the  northern  parts  can  witness,  that  upon  the  making  of  peace,  the 
receiving  the  rebels  to  mercy,  it  was  a  common  practice  among  the 
common  sort  of  them  (I  mean  such  as  were  not  sword-men)  to  thrust 
long  needles  into  the  horses  of  our  English  troops,  and  they  dying 
thereupon,  to  be  ready  to  tear  out  one  another's  throat  for  a  share  of 
them.  And  no  spectacle  was  more  frequent  in  the  ditches  of  towns, 
and  especially  in  wasted  countries,  tlian  to  see  multitudes  of  these 
poor  people  dead  with  their  mouths  all  colored  green  by  eating 
nettles,  docks,  and  all  things  they  could  rend  up  above  ground. 
These,  and  very  many  like  lamentable  effects  followed  their  rebellion, 
and  no  doubt  the  rebels  had  been  utterly  destroyed  by  famine,  had 
not  a  general  peace  shortly  followed  Tyrone's  submission.'  "  * 

"The  cruel  persecution  " — says  Wright — "which  had  been  carried 
on  during  the  autumn,  seemed  now  to  be  yielding  gradually  to  a 
more  lenient  policy,  which  was  enforced  upon  the  English  govern- 
ment by  the  great  expenditure  of  the  war,  and  by  the  fear  that  the 
obstinate  courage  shown  by  the  natives  might  still  encourage  the 
Spaniards  to  come  to  their  assistance." 

On  the  31st  October,  1602,  Mountjoy  received  from  Elizabeth  a 
letter,  which,  among  other  things,  most  explicitly  indorses  his  course 
of  action  in  this  war.  " '  We  would  have  you  know  for  your  comfort 
that  we  approve  all  the  courses  you  have  held  since  3"ou  took  the 
sword  in  your  whole  government  to  have  been  accompanied  with 
diligence,  wisdom,  and  good  successes,  and  so  we  accept  the  same  at 
your  hand.'"f 

*  Wright,  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  vol.  i.,  p.  585.  +  Ibidem,  p.  586. 


II. 

The  Stuarts  and  the   Commonwealth. 

1.  James  I.  (1603-1625). 
TTTHILE  James  was  still  King  of  Scotland  only  and  was  looking 
forward  with  hope  to  be  Elizabeth's  heir,  he  took  great  pains 
to  conciliate  the  good  will  of  the  Catholic  Continental  Princes.*  He, 
therefore,  held  out  in  his  correspondence  with  them,  promises  that 
he  would  deal  leniently  with  the  Irish  Catholics,  to  whom  Elizabeth's 
despotic  and  intolerant  sway  was  a  yoke  of  incandescent  iron.  But 
even  had  James  been  sincere  in  his  professions  of  tolerance,  and  had 
he  possessed  firmness  sufficient  to  carry  them  out,  the  temper  then 
cherished  towards  Ireland  by  the  English  people,  and  the  dearest 
interests  of  the  men  of  blood  and  greed  who  ruled  Ireland  from  Dub- 
lin Castle,  must  have  rendered  abortive  the  King's  best  intentions 
and  tried  his  firmness  to  the  utmost.  James,  however,  possessed 
neither  sincerity,  nor  firmness.  That  the  favorable  opinion  gained 
for  him  in  Eome  and  in  the  Catholic  Courts,  as  well  as  among  the 
adherents  of  tlie  old  faith  in  England,  should  have  reached  Ireland 
and  there  raised  liigli  the  hopes  of  the  population  oppressed  by 
Mountjoy,   Carew,   Chichester,    and   such   adventurers  as  Edmund 


*  "  Kin^  James  was.  at  the  utmost  pains  to  gain  the  friendship  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Princes,  as  a  necessary  precaution  to  facilitate  his  accession  to  the  Eng- 
lish throne.  Lord  Home,  who  was  himself  a  papist,  was  entrusted  with  a  secret 
commission  to  the  Pope.  The  archbishop  of  Glasgow  was  an  active  instrument 
with  those  of  his  own  religion.  The  Pope  expressed  such  favourable  sentiments 
both  of  the  King  and  of  his  right  to  the  throne  of  England,  that  James  thought 
himself  bound  some  years  after  to  acknowledge  the  obligaticm  in  a  public  manner. 
Sir  James  Lindsey  made  great  progress  in  gaining  the  English  papists  to  acknowl- 
edge his  majesty's  title." — Carte,  "  Life  of  James  Duke  of  Ormonde,"  London, 
1776,  vol.  i.,  p.  21. 

(203) 


204  The  Cause  of  Irelayid. 

Spenser,  Walter  Kaleigh,  and  Humphrey  Gilbert, — was  natural  and 
inevitable.  The  Irish,  after  his  accession,  committed  the  imprudence 
of  seiiding  a  deputation  to  James,  asking  for  the  free  exercise  of  their 
religion.  "This  act,"  says  Wright,  "was  premature  and  indiscreet, 
and  it  irritated  the  King,  who  subsequently  behaved  with  more 
reserve  to  the  Irish  lords,  and  was  less  lavish  of  his  professions  of 
grace.  Nevertheless,  various  expressions  uttered  by  James  from 
time  to  time  in  the  freedom  of  conversation,  were  eagerly  seized  upon 
by  the  priests  as  proofs  of  his  secret  inclinations,  and  he  seemed  to 
give  some  authority  to  the  rumors  they  propagated,  by  his  first 
speech  in  parliament,  in  which  he  spoke  of  popery  as  the  '  mother 
church.'  Encouraged  by  these  appearances,  the  popish  ecclesiastics 
laid  aside  the  caution  which  had  previously  attended  their  move- 
ments, and  they  not  only  practised  openly  with  their  votaries,  but 
they  denounced  the  vengeance  of  their  spiritual  authority  on  all  who 
should  attend  the  worship  established  by  the  English  government,  or 
dissemble  the  religious  principles  which  they  had  received  from  their 
forefathers."* 

The  extraordinary  enthusiasm  with  which  the  Catholic  worship 
had  been  openly  restored  in  all  the  cities  of  the  south  of  Ireland,  pro- 
duced a  great  sensation  in  Dublin  Castle,  in  the  Court  circles  in  Lon- 
don, and  throughout  Ejigland.  The  cities  of  Ireland  had  been  made, 
every  one  of  them,  military  strongholds  for  the  English  religion  as 
well  as  English  supremacy.  They  were  so  many  garrisons  in  a  con- 
quered and  wasted  country.  The  land  for  many  a  mile  round  about 
each  of  them  had  been  ravaged  and  depopulated  by  the  commanders 
in  the  last  Elizabethan  wars;  the  Irish  inhabitants  had  been  either 
banished  from  every  incorporated  town,  or  had  been  ruthlessly  put  to 
the  sword;  so  that,  at  the  death  of  Elizabeth,  Protestants  on  both 
sides  of  the  Channel  had  good  reason  to  believe,  that  the  largest  and 
by  far  the  fairest  portion  of  Ireland  was  held  by  Englishmen,  their 
co-religionists,  and  that,  from  cities  and  incorporated  towns,  at  least, 

*  "  History  of  Ireland,"  vol.  i.,  p.  596.     Of  course  we  cannot  expect  this  writer 
to  mention  Catholics  or  the  Catholic  Faith  with  either  respect  or  courtesy. 


The  Pajxists  reappear  in  the  Cities.  205 

'  Popery  and  Papists  '  had  disappeared  for  ever.  And  lo  !  at  the  first 
tidings  of  the  Queen's  death,  in  all  these  places  the  Old  Eeligion 
starts  up  as  from  the  grave,  and  there  is  a  veritable  confederation  of 
these  cities  against  Protestantism  and  the  Lord  Deputy  Mountjoy  with 
his  sturdy  fellow-exterminater,  George  Carew!  The  land  had  been 
desolated  by  fire  and  sword,  and  lo!  fi-om  out  the  still  smoking  ashes 
the  rank  weeds  of  "  papistry,"  which  it  had  cost  so  much  to  eradicate, 
lift  up  their  heads  on  every  side! 

What !  were  not  the  Irish  People  crushed,  exterminated,  or,  at 
least,  demoralized? 

Wonderful  to  say — No  ! 

Though  hunted  from  city,  town,  and  fenced  village,  and  shot 
down  like  wild  beasts  Avhen  they  dared  to  appear  in  their  neiglibor- 
hood  within  a  circuit  of  many  a  mile,  the  proscribed  and  outlawed 
Celts  could  not  be  kept  away  from  the  gi-aves  of  their  sires,  from  the 
site  of  their  former  homes,  from  within  view  of  the  monasteries  and 
churches  so  dear  to  their  childhood.  They  reappeared,  like  ghosts, 
all  over  the  fields  and  amid  the  ruins  which  had  drunk  the  blood  of 
their  kindred.  They  alarmed  and  terrified  the  stranger-occupants 
of  tlie  old  homesteads  as  with  the  spectres  of  the  massacred  dead,  as 
with  the  fearful  importunity  of  spirits  which  would  not  rest  in  their 
unhallowed  graves,  but  would  persist  in  reappearing  to  demand  rep- 
aration or  to  threaten  revenge  on  the  wrong-doers. 

How  came  these  Irish  Catholics  to  insinuate  themselves  and  to 
establish  a  foot-hold,  even  in  the  cities  of  the  Pale,  even  in  Cork  and 
Waterford  and  Dublin  ?  In  spite  of  the  awful  extermination  wrought 
in  Ulster  by  Mountjoy,  in  Munster  by  Carew,  in  Connaught  by  Bing- 
ham, how  did  living  men  arise  from  amid  the  pools  of  blood  poured 
out  by  the  sword  of  the  exterminator,  as  if  the  very  slain  were  restored 
to  life  ?  Sir  Walter  Kaleigh,  while  Mayor  and  Governor  of  Cork,  had 
erected  gallowses  on  both  sides  of  Main  Street  from  the  North  Gate 
to  the  South,  and  on  them  hanged  up  the  hundreds  of  Catholic  pris- 
oners captured  in  one  of  his  raids.  The  skeletons,  the  skulls  of  Irish 
Catholics,  dangled   in  chains  from  battlements  and  city  walls,  or 


206  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

bleached,  stuck  on  pikes  above  the  city  gates, — for  years  and  years, 
througli  successive  generations.  Yet  all  this  bloodshed,  these  hor- 
rors, this  terror,  which  made  of  the  fair  earth  an  image  of  Hell,  did 
not  quell  the  revolt  of  the  Celtic  conscience,  or  crush  the  spirit  of 
Celtic  patriotism. 

When  Carew  had  written  his  Pacata  Hihernia  {'  Ireland  Pacified ') 
amid  the  desolated  fields  of  Munster,  and  while  her  soil  was  still 
reeking  with  the  blood  of  hundreds  of  thousands, — Elizabeth  dies, 
and  lo!  the  Cities  of  the  South,  the  strongholds  of  Protestantism  and 
of  the  English  power,  rise  up  and  celebrate  the  Mass,  and  sing  the 
Te  Deum  in  their  long-desecrated  cathedrals  !  Here  is  Wright's 
account  of  this  surprising  event: 

"Mountjoy  considered  the  rebellion  so  far  at  an  end,  that  he  was 
demanding  the  permission  to  return  to  England,  and  repose  him.self 
after  his  labors.  On  the  12th  of  April  (1603)  he  received  letters 
from  Carew,  informing  him  that  the  last  of  the  rebels  of  Munster, 
Mac  Maurice,  was  blocked  up  in  his  castle  of  Ballingarry,  and  on  the 
point  of  surrender;  and  three  days  afterward  O'Eourke,  the  last  of 
the  insurgent  chiefs  of  the  north,  made  his  submission.  The  Lord 
Deputy  was  already  preparing  to  leave  Ireland  when,  on  the  16th  of 
the  same  month,  he  received  an  insidious  letter  from  the  mayor  or 
governor  of  Cork.  .  .  .  This  was  followed  the  same  day  by  alarming 
letters  from  various  parts  of  Munster.  .  .  .  The  citizens  of  Waterford 
had  broken  open  the  doors  of  the  hospital,  had  introduced  a  popish 
priest.  Dr.  White,  to  officiate  at  St.  Patrick's  Church,  and,  having 
taken  from  the  sexton  the  keys  of  the  Cathedral,  they  liad  '  muti- 
nously '  set  up  the  celebration  of  mass,  and  done  '  many  insolencies  in 
that  kind.'  ...  At  Kilkenny,  a  Dominican  friar,  assisted  by  some  of 
the  town,  had  proceeded  to  the  Black  Friars,  then  used  as  a  session- 
house,  where  they  had  broken  open  the  doors,  pulled  down  the 
benches  and  seats  of  justice,  and  built  an  altar  in  their  place.  .  .  . 
The  citizens  of  Limerick  with  their  priests  had  entered  into  all  the 
churches  of  that  city,  and  there  had  erected  altars  and  restored  the 
rites  of  the  Ptomish  Church;  and  the  citizens  of  Wexford  had  done 


Condition  of  the  Irish  Septs  in  1603.  207 

the  same.  .  .  .  The  citizens  of  Cork  took  possession  of  the  Protes- 
tant churches;  ...  a  pretended  legate  of  the  Pope,  with  a  numerous 
body  of  priests,  went  in  solemn  procession  to  consecrate  the  Cathe- 
dral, and  sang  mass  there  publicly,  while  the  townsmen  placed  guards 
of  armed  men  at  the  church  doors;  and  the  latter  swore  on  the  sac- 
rament, that  they  would  spend  their  lives  and  goods  in  defence  of  the 
Romish  religion.  .  .  .  The  violence  of  the  Catholic  party  in  Cashel 
was  more  conspicuous  even  than  in  the  other  towns  which  had  joined 
in  this  sedition.  .  .  . 

"This  league  of  the  cities  of  Manster — for  it  was  found  that  they 
had  confederated  together — presented  a  new  feature  in  the  history  of 
Irish  politics.  It  had  no  direct  connection  with  that  of  the  Irish 
chiefs,  nor  does  it  appear  to  have  been  stirred  up  by  any  foreign 
agency  or  promise  of  assistance.  It  was  the  work  of  the  priests,  and 
it  was  the  beginning  of  that  agitation  to  obtain  relief  from  harsh 
restrictions  placed  upon  a  religious  creed,  which  was  then  persecuted 
by  the  State,  which  have  continued  without  interruption  to  our  days. 
The  population  of  the  cities  was  for  the  most  part  of  English 
descent,  and  had  no  feeling  or  interest  in  common  with  the  Irish 
Septs."* 

What  was  the  condition  of  these  Septs,  now  broken  up,  with  their 
fragments  scattered  over  the  land  by  the  process  of  plantation  begun 
by  Henry  VIII.,  and  enforced  at  the  point  of  the  sword  by  Elizabeth? 

They  still  occupied  two-thirds  of  the  Island,  and,  wherever  they 
maintained  their  precarious  sway,  the  old  faith,  the  Brehon  Law  with 
its  institutions,  and  the  old  social  customs  and  manners  of  the  Celtic 
race,  prevailed  in  spite  of  all  the  fear  inspired  by  the  English  arms 
and  the  persecuting  religion  which  these  upheld  and  propagated. 

The  Sept  still  clung  to  its  patriarchal  organization,  in  so  far  as  its 
fragmentary  condition  permitted  it  to  do  so.  But  the  wars  of  Eliza- 
beth aimed  at  breaking  up  the  Septs;  and  they  did  their  work  pretty 
thoroughly.     The  fate  which  had  befallen  the  Celts  of  Olialy  and 

*  "  History  of  Ireland,"  vol.  i.,  p.  596. 


208  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Leix  had  already  overtaken  the  Septs  of  Tyrone  and  Tyrconnell. 
The  Plantations  of  James  I.  were  only  to  prepare  the  way  for  the 
Transplantation  into  Connanght,  The  Chiefs  were  to  be  annihilated, 
and  the  Tribesmen  separated  and  scattered  over  the  surface  of  the 
island.  Still  they  clung  to  Avhat  was  left  them  of  their  institutions. 
The  love  of  them  was  fostered  in  the  homes  of  the  Celtic  Clergy. 

In  1603  the  monasteries  of  Ireland, — which  were  also  the  homes 
of  hospitality,  as  well  as  the  nurseries  of  learning  and  art, — had  either 
fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  Protestant  Clergy  and  laity,  or  been 
reduced  to  ruins.  In  those  which  were  outside  of  the  Pale,  while  the 
English  language  and  literature  may  have  not  been  neglected, — and, 
of  course,  English  letters  were  of  a  necessity  cultivated  in  the  city 
monasteries, — the  native  Irish  tongue,  and  the  Latin  of  Catholic 
Pome  were  the  subjects  of  special  stud}^  Of  the  medieval  literary 
monuments  which  escaped  the  hate  of  the  Reformation  and  the 
destroying  rage  of  the  Parhamentarian  fanatics, — exquisite  works 
both  in  the  Native  Celtic  and  in  Latin  survive  to  attest  the  high 
degree  of  culture  imparted  in  these  great  national  schools.  The 
most  learned  of  the  Brehons  and  Seannachies  often  became  monks  or 
entered  the  ranks  of  the  secular  priesthood.  Thus  the  knowledge  of 
the  Brehon  Law  and  the  national  institutions  was  imparted  in  the 
monastic  schools  together  with  that  of  theology  and  literature. 
When  the  Eeligious  Houses  were  destroyed  or  given  over  to  Prot- 
estant uses,  the  faithful  guides  and  teachers  of  the  people  imparted 
knowledge  wherever  they  might.  Fugitive  priests  and  bishops  col- 
lected their  scholars  around  them  in  the  bogs  to  which  they  were 
driven,  or  in  the  depths  of  the  forest,  or  amid  the  solitude  of  the 
mountain  heaths  and  rocks.  Most  touching  instances  are  recorded  of 
the  difficulties  which  masters  and  pupils  had  to  contend  with  in  these 
evil  days. 

The  Jesuit  martyr,  Edmund  Campion,  who  wrote,  in  May  1571, 
an  account  of  his  mission  among  the  Catholic  Irish  in  the  preceding 
year,  seems  to  write  rather  contemptuously  of  the  Brehon  Schools, 
without  accounting  to  himself  for  the  fact  that  the  Brehon  Law  and 


How  and  wliere  the,  hunted  Irish   Tcmght  and  Learned.      209 

the  Irish  Language,  like  the  Cathohc  religion  itself,  were  proscribed 
by  English  Sovereigns.  In  the  temporary  huts  where  Irish  Law  and 
Letters  were  clandestinely  taught,  amid  the  forest  or  the  morass,  the 
missionary  was  shocked  to  find  so  little  that  reminded  him  of  Oxford. 
"They" — the  Brehon  law-students — "speak  Latin  like  a  vulgar  lan- 
guage, learned  in  their  common  schools  of  leachcraft  (medicine)  and 
law,  whereat  they  begin  children  and  hold  on  sixteen  or  twenty  years, 
conning  by  rote  the  aphorisms  of  Hippocrates  and  the  Civil  Institutes, 
and  a  few  other  parings  of  these  two  faculties.  I  have  seen  them 
where  they  kept  school,  ten  in  some  one  chamber,  grovelling  upon 
couches  of  straw,  their  books  at  their  noses,  themselves  lying  pros- 
trate; and  so  to  chaunt  out  their  lessons  by  piecemeal,  being  the  most 
part  lusty  fellows  of  twenty-five  years  and  upwards."  * 

Stanihurst,  who  came  later  and  wrote  in  the  last  years  of  Eliza- 
beth's reign,  describes  the  law-courts  held  by  the  Brehon-Judges  for 
chiefs  and  people,  in  the  open  air  and  on  the  consecrated  spot  on  the 
hill-side.  The  spectacle  and  the  proceedings  testified  to  the  demo- 
cratic spirit,  the  practical  Christian  communism,  and  the  veneration 
for  the  laws  derived  from  the  forefathers.  These  peaceful  gatherings 
always  afforded  proof  of  the  brotherly  spirit  which  ruled  the  liti- 
gants. When  the  assembly  broke  up,  all  present  were  invited  by  the 
chiefs  to  partake  of  their  hospitality;  and  he  was  the  happiest  and 
proudest  who  was  followed  down  the  hill  by  the  largest  crowd  of 
friends  and  dependants. 

A  memorable  instance  of  the  fondness  with  which  the  Catholic 
Irish  clung  to  these  institutions  and  customs,  is  related  by  Sir  John 
Davies,  Attorney  General  of  James  I.  This  magistrate  accompanied 
the  Lord  Deputy  in  a  circuit  made  through  the  northern  counties  for 
the  purpose  of  holding  assizes,  abolishing  the  Brehon  Law  with  its 
courts,  and  of  establishing  everywhere  the  administration  of  English 
law. 

"  It  was  from  a  priest  who  had  once  been  a  Brehon,  that  Sir  John 


*  Edmund  Campion,  "  Account  of  Ireland,"  p.  18. 

14 


210  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Davies,  in  1610,  received  the  treatise  on  'Corbes  and  Hermachs'; 
and  few  who  have  read  his  account  of  the  first  assizes  held  for  the 
county  Fermanagh,  in  the  ruins  of  the  Abbey,  in  the  island  of  Lough 
Erne,  will  forget  the  aged  Brehon  of  the  Maguires  drawing  from  his 
bosom  with  trembling  hand  the  ancient  roll,  and  refusing  to  part 
with  it,  until  the  Lord  Deputy,  Sir  Arthur  Chichester,  liad  given 
him  his  hand  and  faith  that  it  should  be  restored  to  him.  It  was 
only  at  this  period  of  the  reign  of  James  I.  that  the  practice  of  the 
Brehon  law  was  forbidden  in  Ireland;  for  the  Statutes  of  Kilkenny 
.  .  .  only  prohibited  the  use  of  it  in  ruling  differences  between  the 
English.  The  Irish  had  no  other  as  they  were  denied  the  use  of  the 
English  law.  But  after  the  subduing  of  Tyrone's  rebellion,  the  Eng- 
lish judges  who  had  hitherto  gone  their  circuits  round  the  Pale,  were 
sent  all  round  Ireland  to  administer  English  law;  and  the  practice  of 
the  Irish  code  was  superseded,  and  declared  'to  be  no  law,  but  a 
lewd  custom.'"* 

English  law,  all  through  the  long  forty-four  years  of  the  reign  of 
Elizabeth  (and  the  same  may  be  said  with  truth  of  the  three  preceding 
reigns),  only  came  to  the  Irish  Catholics  either  in  the  shape  of  the 
Law  of  Supremacy  and  that  against  Eecusants,  or  accompanied  by 
these  fearful  edicts  of  persecution.  And  these  laws,  in  nearly  every 
district  in  Ireland,  were  only  enforced  through  the  oppressive  agency 
of  Martial  Law.  Indeed  this  last  may,  without  exaggeration,  be  said 
to  have  ruled  the  land  not  only  in  war,  but  at  all  times.  It  was  in 
the  power  of  the  Lord  Deputy,  and  of  the  Presidents  of  Provinces,  to 
authorize  their  inferiors  to  execute  martial  law  in  their  localities. 
This  simply  meant  the  power  to  do  away  with  the  landed  proprietors, 
and  to  seize,  retain,  and  confiscate  their  property. 

The  spectacle,  therefore,  of  the  feeble  remnants  of  the  once  pow- 
erful Sept  of  the  Maguires  of  Fermanagh,  assembling  in  the  Island  of 
Lough  Erne,  to  meet  in  solemn  assize,  held  in  the  ruined  cloisters  of 
the  Abbey,  the  Lord  Deputy  and  the  English  Judges,  conveys  to  the 

*  John  p.  Prendergast,  "  The  Cromwellian  Settlement  of  Ireland,"  p.  16. 


Holu  English  Laiu  was  Presented  to  the  Irish.  211 

mind  a  pretty  exact  picture  of  the  social  and  political  condition  of  the 
country  and  its  people.  James  I.  was  then  carrying  out,  under 
the  veil  of  a  philanthropical  statesmanship,  the  traditional  purpose  of 
England  to  annihilate  the  Irish  race,  beginning  with  whatever  re- 
mained of  the  ancient  Celtic  institutions.  It  is  well  known,  that  even 
while  Sir  John  Davies  endeavored  to  temper  the  administration  of  the 
English  laws,  and  to  make  the  people  entertain  some  sense  of  security 
and  hopefulness,  the  laws  against  Popery  and  those  enjoining  the 
attendance  at  Protestant  worship  were  rigorously  enforced  within 
and  outside  of  the  Pale.  The  poor  Brehon-Priest,  who  with  trem- 
bling hand  delivered  up  a  portion  of  the  venerated  ancestral  Code, 
could  only  by  stealth  and  at  the  risk  of  his  life  celebrate  mass  in 
ruined  abbey  or  church,  or  minister  by  night  and  hurriedly  to  the 
spiritual  comfort  of  the  sick  or  the  dying. 

At  this  point  in  Irish  history,  as  from  a  high  dividing  line,  where 
we  can  look  back  over  the  past,  and  forward  to  the  eventful  ages 
before  us,  we  may  well  ask  ourselves  the  question.  Whether  the  ex- 
perimental education  so  long  given  to  the  Irish  people  were  fitted  to 
inspire  them  with  a  respect  for  authority  personified  in  British  rulers, 
or  for  law  as  embodied  in  the  cruel  and  irrational  legislation,  so  often 
held  to  their  lips,  like  a  cup  full  of  unmixed  bitterness  and  deadliest 
poison?  And,  then,  after  the  experience  of  the  fearful  past,  was  to 
come  the  new  legislation  of  James,  and  Charles  I.,  and  the  Puritan 
Commonwealth;  and  then  .  .  .  ,  and  then  .  .  .  !  What  horrors  fill 
up  the  intervals  between  Cromwell  and  the  close  of  the  18th  century! 
How  could  a  people  so  oppressed  and  legislated  against  be  a  law- 
abiding  people,  Avhen  law  was  to  them  a  red-handed  tyrant  clad 
in  steel,  imposing  on  the  Christian  conscience  the  violation  of  all 
the  most  sacred  obligations,  and  ignoring  all  right,  human  and 
divine? 

In  the  million  or  million  and  a  half  of  Catholic  Celts  who,  in 
1603,  still  lived  all  over  Ireland,  in  perpetual  dread  of  new  persecu- 
tions, new  rebellions,  massacres,  confiscations,  and  transplantations, 
there  were  magnificent  materials  with  which  to  build  up  a  great. 


212  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

prosperous,  and  cultivated  Christian  community.  For  that  it  was 
only  needful  to  engraft  on  the  institutions,  the  civilization  derived 
from  a  not  inglorious  past,  what  was  most  in  conformity  with 
true  liberty  and  the  progress  achieved  by  the  other  nations  of 
Christendom. 

No!  extermination,  not  conciliation,  is  the  historic  policy  of  Eng^ 
land  in  Ireland. 

James  I.,  in  giving  up  his  scheme  of  peaceful,  legislative  reforma- 
tion, for  one  of  "extirpation,"  was  only  the  tool  of  that  Policy. 

Any  fair-minded  person  who  has  read  in  the  authentic  State 
Papers,  which  are  daily  brought  to  light  in  the  Eecord  Office,  Lon- 
don, the  proofs  of  the  nefarious  methods  resorted  to  by  Lord  Lieu- 
tenants, Lord  Deputies,  Lord  Justices,  and  Lord  Presidents  in 
Ireland,  methods  expressly  sanctioned  by  their  Sovereign, — will  not 
be  surprised  that  James  I.  was,  in  this  respect,  as  unscrupulous  as 
Elizabeth.  "The  Irish  Enemy"  had  been  the  designation  under 
which  all  the  native  Irishmen  of  Celtic  race  were  outlawed  before 
1534.  Up  to  that  year  nothing  but  the  sheer  impossibility  of  driving 
them  by  force  from  their  native  land,  prevented  their  extermination. 
When  Henry  VIII.  and  Elizabeth  attempted  to  enforce  the  Acts  of 
Supremacy  and  Uniformity  by  making  the  refusal  high  treason,  then 
the  word  "Traitors"  was  substituted  for  the  "Irish  Enemy,"  or 
rather  included  it,  adding  the  bitterness  of  religious  fanaticism  to 
the  old  fierce  hatred  of  race.  Ireland  must  not  be  permitted  to  re- 
main in  the  hands  of  "traitors"  and  "papists."  Ireland  was,  as 
James  himself  expressed  it,  'a  back-door  to  England';  it  must  not  be 
permitted  to  remain  in  possession  of  any  but  Englishmen,  Scotch- 
men, and  Protestants. 

The  substitution  of  the  English  Common  Law  for  the  Brehon  In- 
stitutions and  Customs  was  only  a  covert  way  toward  that  end.  It 
did  not  work  fast  enough  to  gratify  the  theological  passions  which 
were  fermenting  so  fiercely  in  England,  still  more  so  in  Scotland,  and 
more  fiercely  still  among  the  numerous  Scotch  Puritans  in  the  north 
of  Ireland;  and  more  impatient  than  they  were  the  officials  of  Dublin 


How  the  first  Confiscations  were  brought  about.  213 

Castle  and  the  crowd  of  hungry  adventurers,  who  preyed  on  confis- 
cation, and  were  skilled  in  devising  or  discovering  conspiracies  and 
rebellions. 

The  broad  and  fertile  lands  of  the  Geraldines  were  in  the  hands 
of  the  English  "Undertakers,"  to  whom  was  left  the  task  of  "bury- 
ing "  for  ever  in  the  south  the  nationality  and  religion  of  Ireland. 
The  northern  half  of  the  Island,  still, — in  1603,  nominally  held  by 
O'Xeill  and  O'Donnell,  with  the  fragments  of  Septs  who  still  clung  to 
these  chiefs, — must  be  brought  under  absolute  subjection  to  British 
Protestantism.  O'Xeill  and  O'Donnell  had  just  been  pardoned  and 
restored,  with  restricted  rights,  to  their  ancient  inheritance  in  Tyrone 
and  Tyrconnell.  The  Lord  Deputy,  Chichester,  and  the  Justices 
who  had  accompanied  him  on  his  circuit  through  the  north,  had 
convinced  themselves  that  there  could  be  no  hope  of  lasting  success 
for  the  English  and  Scotch  colonies  of  Ulster,  so  long  as  the  great 
Irish  chieftains  were  permitted  to  remain  in  the  land,  holding  up, 
even  in  their  altered  titles  and  sadly  diminished  power,  a  shadow  of 
the  old  sovereignties  so  dear  to  the  Irish  heart.  The  two  Earls  must 
go  !  Think  you  Dublin  Castle  will  be  at  a  loss  to  devise  a  conspiracy 
or  rebellion? 

Forged  letters  had  been  successful  devices  employed  by  the  Lord 
Presidents  and  Lord  Deputies  in  getting  rid  of  the  Geraldines  and 
getting  hold  of  their  broad  lands.  Such  letters  play  a  conspicuous 
part  in  the  tragic  drama  of  persecution  enacted  in  the  Three  King- 
doms during  the  10th  and  17th  centuries. 

"A  letter  dropt  in  the  Privy  Council  Chamber  (Dublin),"  says 
Leland,  "intimated  a  traitorous  scheme  of  rebellion  formed  by  the 
Earls  of  Tyrone  and  Tyrconnel,  and  other  Irish  lords  and  gentle- 
men of  the  north;  that  they  had  solicited  assistance  from  Spain 
and  Brussels,  and  intended  to  begin  the  war  with  surprising  the 
Castle  of  Dublin,  and  assassinating  the  lord-deputy  and  council. 
It  seems  extraordinary,  that  the  northerns  who  were  still  smarting 
under  the  chastisement  they  had  received  in  the  late  rebellion, 
whose  consequence  and  influence  were  considerably  diminished,  and 


214  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

who  were  very  lately  reconciled  to  government,  should  precipitately 
involve  themselves  in  the  guilt  of  a  new  rebellion."* 

A  contemporary  historian,  one  whose  account  of  the  rebellion  of 
1641  has  been  lately  published  from  the  original  manuscript,  states 
the  opinion  now  generally  received  in  the  following  terms:  "When 
O'Neill  observed  his  nearest  and  dearest  kinsmen  to  flinch  from  him 
by  degrees,  (he)  condescended  to  make  peace.  The  State  of  Ireland 
being  jealous  of  his  greatness,  informed  Her  Majesty  of  some  private 
practices  of  Tyrone  and  Tyrconnel,  .  .  .  which  was  truly  and  really 
a  misinformation.  Many  such  tricks  were  used  between  Her  Majesty 
and  the  State  of  Ireland,  tending  to  his  destruction,  as  observable  in 
the  Chronicle  of  Fynisse  Morrisson,  Secretary  of  State  in  England  and 
Ireland.  However  his  men,  weary  of  war  and  tasting  now  of  the 
security  of  peace,  being  in  continual  danger,  fled  away,  (and  he)  went 
to  Eome  himself  and  Tyrconnel."  f 

"The  King  himself,"  says  Dr.  Curry,  "was  so  apprehensive  that 
this  affair  of  the  Earls  '  might  blemish  (as  he  expresses  it  in  a  proc- 
lamation on  that  occasion)  the  re])utation  of  that  frieiidshi]}  which 
ought  to  be  mutually  observed  between  him  and  other  jJf'inces,  that  he 
thought  if  not  amiss  to  publish  some  such  ^natter  by  way  of  proclama- 
tion, as  might  better  clear  men's  judgments  concerning  the  same.'  At 
the  same  time  solemnly  promising,  '  that  it  should  a-p])ear  to  the  world 
as  clear  as  the  sun,  by  evident  jjroof,  that  the  only  ground  of  these 
earls'  departure  was  the  private  knowledge  and  inward  terror  of 
their  own  guiltiness.'  But  neither  in  that  proclamation,  nor  in  any 
manner  whatever,  did  his  majesty  design,  ever  after,  to  enlighten  the 
world,  even  with  the  least  glimpse  of  evident  proof,  that  such  was 
the  only  motive  of  these  earls'  departure.  And  I  shall  leave  it  to  the 
decision  of  every  candid  reader,  whether  the  non-performance  of  his 
majesty's  solemn  promise  be  not  a  better  negative  proof  of  the  nullity 
and  fiction  of  this  conspiracy  of  the  Earls,  than  the  bare  non-appear- 
ance of  a  memorial  in  their  vindication  can  be  deemed  of  its  reality."  J 

*  "  History  of  Ireland,"  ii.,  4J)8. 

t  John  T.  Gilbert,  "  Contemporary  Hist,  of  Affairs  in  Ireland,"  i.,  pp.  5,  6. 

X  Joliu  Curry,  "  Review  of  Civil  Wars  in  Ireland,"  i.,  86. 


James  I.  on  Irish  Immorality  I  215 

Consulting  James'  silly  and  hypocritical  proclamation  itself,  we 
find  that  it  professes  to  reply  to  the  causes  of  flight  assigned  to  them 
hy  popular  report  among  Irish  Catholics, — that  they  were  refused 
justice  for  manifest  grievances,  and  persecuted  for  conscience'  sake. 
He  descends  to  the  base  expedient  of  aspersing  both  the  religion  of 
the  Irish  people,  the  morality  of  the  chiefs,  and  the  social  conditions 
created  by  Catholicism.  It  would,  he  thought,  be  preposterous  to 
trouble  men  about  religious  opinions  when  they  had  no  religion  at 
all,  and  lived  in  such  barbarous  and  unchristian  ways,  that  they 
regarded  "murder  as  no  fault,  marriage  of  no  use,  nor  any  man 
deemed  valiant,  who  did  not  glory  in  rapine  and  oppression.  .  .  .  We 
do  hereby  profess,  on  the  word  of  a  King  (the  hypocrite  goes  on  to 
say)  that  there  never  Avas  so  much  as  any  shadow  of  molestation,  nor 
purpose  of  proceeding  in  any  degree  against  them,  for  matter  con- 
cerning religion." 

As  to  the  flimsy  fabric  set  forth  by  Bishop  Carleton  and  dwelt  on 
so  complacently  by  Wright,  it  can  deceive  no  serious-minded  person. 
From  the  concluding  portion  of  the  royal  proclamation,  it  is  clear 
that  the  Dublin  Castle  officials  had  been  trumping  up  accusations  of 
plots  and  conspiracies,  and  sedulously  fostering  in  the  royal  mind  the 
notion  that  the  Earls  were  only  husbanding  their  resources  for  a  new 
rebellion.  "Their  only  end  was,"  he  saA's,  "to  have  made  themselves 
by  degrees  more  able  than  now  ...  to  resist  all  lawful  authority 
(when  they  should  return  to  their  vomit  again)  by  usurping  power 
over  other  good  subjects  of  ours,  that  dwell  among  them,  better  born 
than  they,  and  utterly  disclaiming  from  any  dependency  upon  them. 
....  They  have  (before  running  out  of  our  kingdom)  not  only 
entered  into  combination  for  stirring  up  sedition  and  intestine  re- 
bellion, but  have  directed  divers  instruments,  as  well  priests  as  others, 
to  make  offers  to  foreign  States  and  Princes.  .  .  .  Under  the  con- 
dition of  being  made  free  from  the  English  government,  they  re- 
solved also  to  comprehend  the  utter  extirpation  of  all  those  subjects 
that  are  now  remaining  alive  within  that  kingdom,  formerly  de- 
scended from  the  Ensrlish  race."  .  .  . 


216  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Not  only  did  James  never  afterward  attempt  to  furnish  the  slight- 
est proof  of  these  grave  assertions,  but  no  such  proof  ever  has  been 
adduced  or  found  in  the  State  Papers.  All  these  rumors  of  con- 
spiracy and  combination  with  foreign  powers  were  easily  believed  by 
the  English  people,  as  were  the  resolutions  to  exterminate  in  Ireland 
all  persons  of  English  birth  or  race.  These  helped  to  foster  the 
national  hatred  of  the  "Irishry,"  and  justified  in  advance  every  pro- 
ject set  on  foot  for  another  attempt  to  "root  out"  the  "Enemy." 

Soon  after  the  flight  of  the  Earls,  and  while  the  Govei'nment  was 
bus}^,  on  the  one  hand,  in  taking  possession  of  the  lands  of  the  fugi- 
tives, and,  on  the  other,  in  preparing,  by  such  utterances  as  the  above 
proclamation,  to  justify  James'  vast  schemes  of  "Plantation,"  a  young 
northern  chief.  Sir  Cahir  O'Dougherty,  was  provoked  into  open  re- 
bellion. He  was  closely  allied  to  both  the  exiled  princes.  He  was 
killed  on  the  battle-field  by  "an  accidental  shot,"  and  all  his  vast 
estates  and  those  of  his  adherents  were  declared  forfeited  to  the 
Crown.  Thereby,  and  by  the  forfeiture  incurred  by  the  fugitives, 
upwards  of  800,000  acres  of  arable  land  in  Ulster  were  at  the  dis- 
posal of  the  King  for  protestantizing  and  anglifying  the  Kingdom. 

The  King  was  not  fortunate  in  his  attempt  to  put  forth  the  pre- 
tended treason  of  Tyrone  and  Tyrconnell  as  a  reason  for  his  change 
of  policy  toward  the  populations  of  Ulster.  In  the  scheme  first 
divulgated,  James  purposed  to  restore  to  the  great  chieftains  and 
principal  landholders  their  own  immediate  demesnes,  as  distinguished 
from  the  lands  of  the  whole  Sept.  The  lands  thus  given  back  to 
these  great  nobles  were  to  be  held  under  the  King  for  the  perform- 
ance of  Knight's  service.  The  Creaghts,  or  wandering  pastoral  pop- 
ulation, were  to  live  thenceforward  in  villages  with  fixed  pasture 
lands.  They  were  to  pay  a  money-rent  to  their  lords  instead  of  the 
ancient  burthens  of  coigne  and  livery.  The  months  spent  by  Sir 
John  Davies  and  Chichester  in  introducing  this  change  into  Ulster 
and  makhig  it  accepted, — the  poetic  Attorney  General  conceives  to 
have  been  so  Avell  spent  that  this  year  was  to  the  people  "a  year  of 
jubilee." 


The  King  Promises ;  and  Deceives,  217 

Perhaps  it  might  have  been  regarded  as  such,  had  the  King  been 
in  good  faith,  or  compelled  his  subordinates  in  the  government  of 
Ireland  to  execute  every  part  of  his  compact  with  the  people.  But 
the  promises  made,  and  the  hopes  held  out,  in  1607  were  alike 
brought  to  naught  in  1608. 

To  say  that  the  flight  of  O'Xeill  and  O'Donnell  forced  the  King  to 
change  his  purpose  and  undo  what  he  had  just  done,  would  be  to  say 
what  is  not  warranted  by  the  facts  of  history.  In  two  different  proc- 
lamations issued  on  the  occasion  of  this  flight,  the  King  declared, 
that,  in  taking  possession  of  the  territories  belonging  to  the  fugitives, 
he  shonld  see  to  it  that  the  inhabitants  were  protected  and  main- 
tained in  their  holdings.  The  advice  of  Chichester,  who  was  to  profit 
so  largely  by  the  new  scheme  of  plantation  of  1608,  prevailed  over  all 
other  considerations.  "He  (Chichester)  joined  with  great  abilities 
.and  attainments  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  country  to  be  planted, 
of  the  manners  and  character  of  its  present  inhabitants,  and  of  the 
Avishes  and  exigencies  of  their  chiefs.  He  caused  surveys  to  be  taken 
of  the  counties  where  the  new  settlements  were  to  be  established, 
drew  up  particular  descriptions  of  them,  jwinting  out  the  situations 
proper  for  building  towns  and  castles,  and  made  a  full  report  of  the 
character  of  the  Irish  chiefs,  and  tlie  manner  in  which  they  should 
be  treated,  and  pointed  out  the  impediments  which  Avere  to  be 
expected,  and  how  they  ought  to  be  remoA^ed."  * 

No  one  man,  Avith  the  sole  exception  of  CroniAvell,  has  done  more 
toAvard  extirpating  the  old  Irish  race  from  the  land  of  their  fathers, 
or  has  left  behind  a  greater  name  for  mingled  cruelty  aiid  ability, 
than  Arthur  Chichester.  The  search  into  the  public  records  of  both 
Kingdoms,  and  a  conscientious  study  of  the  documentary  treasures  in 
possession  of  the  great  families,  will  surely  bring  to  light  the  formal 
and  explicit  proof  of  Avhat  is  now  only  a  matter  of  circumstantial 
evidence, — that  the  first  plantation  scheme  of  James,  based  on  an 
unsuccessful  attempt  made  by  him,f  before  his  accession  to  the  Eng- 


Wright,  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  i.,  p.  602.  t  Ibidem,  p.  602. 


218  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

lish  throne,  to  colonize  the  most  fertile  portions  of  the  highlands  of 
Scotland  with  planters  from  the  southern  counties,  was  given  up  at 
the  instance  of  the  Irish  Lord  Deputy,  who  substituted  one  of  his 
own,  one  which  effectually  planted  the  Anglo-Scotch  Protestant 
ascendancy  in  the  confiscated  territories  of  Tyrone  and  TyrconnelL 

The  Plantation  of  Ulster  on  the  grand  scale  proposed  by  the  Lord 
Deputy  and  adopted  by  the  King,  began  in  earnest  in  1608-9, 
though  not  before  1613  did  the  Irish  Parliament  packed  by  the  King, 
the  Lord  Deputy,  and  the  Attorney  General,  sanction  the  enormous 
iniquity  committed  against  the  two  fugitive  Earls,  and,  what  was  in- 
finitely worse,  confiscate  the  patrimony  of  an  entire  people,  who  had 
neither  rebelled,  nor  conspired,  and  were  guilty  only  of  the  crime  of 
being  Celts  and  Catholics. 

The  ancient  inhabitants  of  six  entire  counties  were  thus  doomed 
to  be  disinherited,  and  driven  from  one  corner  of  Ireland  to  another, 
as  if  they  were  herds  of  wild  buffaloes,  that  could  be  surrounded  by 
the  hunters,  and  forced  at  the  point  of  the  lance  far  away  from  the 
path  of  advancing  civilization.  But  what  that  civilization  was  Avhich 
such  men  as  Chichester  could  implant  anywhere,  we  must  not  and 
need  not  stop  to  inquire. 

There  were  three  divisions  made  of  the  spoils  : 

First,  to  '  English  and  Scotch  Avho  are  to  plant  their  proportions 
with  English  and  Scottish  tenants; ' 

Secondly,  to  '  servitors  in  Ireland,  who  may  take  English  or 
Irish  tenants,  at  their  choice; ' 

Thirdly,  to  *  natives  of  those  counties  who  are  to  be  free- 
holders. ' 

The  largest  and  fairest  portion  of  the  lands  was  bestowed  on  the 
favored  few  of  the  first  class;  *  on  the  next  were  bestowed  those  of 

*  Orders  and  Conditions  of  the  Plantation  of  Ulster.  8.  That  in  the  surveys  obser- 
vation be  made  what  proportions,  by  name,  are  fittest  to  be  allotted  to  the  Britains; 
what  to  the  Servitors;  and  what  to  the  natives;  wherein  this  respect  is  to  be  had 
that  the  Britains  be  put  in  places  of  best  safety;  the  natives  to  be  dispersed;  and 
the  Servitors  planted  in  those  places  which  are  of  greatest  importance  to  serve 
the  rest. 


The  Plan  hroiufat  home  to  the  American  Mind.  219 

the  second  quality;  and  the  despoiled  Irish  were  planted  on  those  of 
inferior  quality.  But  a  mialignant  feature  of  this  transaction  remains 
behind, — a  feature  unique  in  its  character.  The  wretched  Irish, 
victims  of  a  vile  scheme  of  depredation,  deprived  of  their  paternal 
liomes,  and  exiled  to  the  most  sterile  spots,  were  barbarously  cut  off 
from  all  chance  of  ever  regaining  their  possessions;  as  the  under- 
takers and  servitors  were  bound,  under  penalty,  never  to  sell  to  the 
mere  Irish,  nor  to  Roman  Catholics  of  any  nation:  for  the  disposal  to 
persons  who  did  not  take  the  oath  of  supremacy,  and  '  conform  them- 
selves in  religion  according  to  his  majesty's  laws,'  was  rigorously  pro- 
hibited and  punished. 

"To  bring  this  point  home  to  the  feelings  of  an  American  reader," 
— says  the  author  of  Vindicice  HiberniccB, — "I  venture  to  suppose  an 
analogous  case,  to  which  I  require  particular  attention.  Suppose 
that  the  resistance  of  America  in  1776  had  terminated  as  fatally  as 
the  various  insurrections  of  Ireland  have  done;  or,  to  come  nearer  to 
the  true  state  of  the  case,  to  make  the  analogy  more  complete,  sup- 
pose a  wild  incoherent  letter  had,  in  1774,  been  dropped  in  the  court 
of  St.  James's,  accusing  George  Washington,  Thomas  Jefferson,  Pat- 
rick Henry,  and  Peyton  Randolph,  of  a  conspiracy;  suppose  that 
such  threats  were  held  out,  and  such  underhand  means  used,  as  to 
induce  them  to  have  recourse  to  flight;  suppose  that  in  consequence 
of  their  flight,  George  III.,  imitating  the  pious  example  of  James  I., 
had  seized  on  the  entire  province  of  Virginia;  had  taken  the  in- 
habitants like  so  many  merino  sheep,  and  planted,  in  the  Dismal 
Swamp,  North  Carolina,  those  whose  ancestors,  for  time  immemorial, 
had  had  lordly  palaces  in  the  great  Limestone  Valley;  and  suppose 
further,  that  these  wretched  victims  planted  in  the  Dismal  Swamp, 
were  condemned  to  vegetate  there,  and  that  the  intruders  on  their 
possessions  in  the  Valley  were  bound,  under  heavy  penalties,  never  to 
sell  any  part  of  their  own  lands  to  them;  suppose,  too,  that  a  large 
portion  of  the  ill-fated  inhabitants,  who  could  not  be  placed  ad- 
vantageously in  the  Dismal  Swamp,  were  'transported  into  such  other 
parts  as,  by  reason  of  the  waste  lands  therein,  were  fittest  to  receive 


220  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

them,  and  not  planted  together  in  one  place.'  What  judgment 
would  he  form  of  such  an  odious  system  of  rapine  and  cruelty? 
Would  he  not  regard  it  as  a  violation  of  the  most  sacred  rights  of 
human  nature?  and  as  branding  with  infamy  the  vile  projectors  of 
the  spoliation  and  their  accomplices  ?  Such  a  judgment  ought  he  to 
form  of  the  ''  famous  northern  plantation,  so  honourable  to  the  King ' 
— so  Leland  calls  it:  and  ought  not  the  historians  who  have  not 
merely  palliated,  but  justified  and  eulogized  such  unjust  pro- 
ceedings, partake  of  the  disgrace  of  those  whose  crimes  they  dare 
to  vindicate  ?  "  * 

"Manors  of  1,000,  1,500,  and  3,000  acres  were  offered  by  this  pro- 
ject to  such  English  and  Scottish  as  should  undertake  to  plant  their 
lots  with  British  Protestants,  and  engage  to  allow  no  Irish  to  dwell 
upon  them.  For  the  security  of  the  Plantation,  all  Irish  who  had 
been  in  arms  were  to  be  transplanted  with  their  families,  cattle,  and 
followers,  to  waste  places  in  Munster  and  Connaught,  and  there  set 
down  at  a  distance  from  one  another;  while  those  who  should  be 
suffered  to  remain,  were  to  remove  from  the  lands  allotted  to  the 
planters,  to  places  where  they  could  be  under  the  eye  of  the  Ser- 
vitors, as  those  planters  were  called  who  had  shares  given  them  in 
reward  for  their  services  after  a  war  or  rebellion. 

"The  Irish  gentlemen  who  did  not  forfeit  their  estates  received 
proportions  (intended  to  be  three-fourths  of  their  former  lands,  but 
too  often  only  one  half  or  one  third,  or  none  at  all,  as  the  English 
'  were  their  own  carvers,')  as  immediate  tenants  of  the  King.  Tlieir 
lands  were  liable  to  forfeiture  if  the  chief  took  from  any  of  his  former 
clansmen  any  of  his  ancient  customary  exactions  of  victuals;  if  he 
went  coshering  on  them  as  of  old;  if  he  used  gavelkind,  or  took  the 
name  of  0\XeiIl  or  O'Donnell,  0' Carroll  or  O'Connor,  by  tanistry. 
On  his  death,  his  youthful  heir  was  made  ward  to  a  Protestant,  to  be 
brought  up  in  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  from  his  twelfth  till  his 
eighteenth  year,   in  English  habits  and  religion, — often  after  this 

*  VindicuB  HiberniccB,  pp.  179-80. 


Hoiv  James  I.  dealt  justly  with  Catholic  Pro2)rieto7's.       221 

enforced  conformity,  all  the  more  embittered,  like  Sir  Phelim 
O'lSTeill,  against  English  religion.  The  wandering  Creaghts  were  to 
become  his  tenants  at  fixed  money  rents.  He  covenanted  that  they 
should  bnild  and  dwell  in  villages,  and  live  on  allotted  portions  of 
land,  ''to  them  as  grievous  as  to  be  made  bondslaves.'  Unable  to 
keep  their  cattle  on  the  small  portions  of  land  assigned  to  them, 
instead  of  ranging  at  large,  they  sold  away  both  corn  and  cattle.* 
Unused  to  money  rents,  though  of  victuals  they  formerly  made 
small  account  because  of  their  plenty,  they  were  unable  to  pay  their 
rents;  and  their  lords  finding  it  impossible  to  exact  them,  and  being 
thus  deprived  of  their  living,  numbers  of  them  fled  to  Spain.  Sim- 
ilar plantations  followed  in  Leitrim,  Longford,  King's  County,  and 
Wexford,  except  that  in  some  (as  in  Leitrim)  one  half  of  the  lands  of 
the  L'ish  were  to  be  seized."! 

The  same  writer,  further  on  and  in  pursuance  of  the  same  subject, 
thus  illustrates  the  practical  working  of  the  royal  plan  of  extermina- 
tion. "Li  the  AYexford  plantation  of  IGll,  the  lands  to  be  planted 
lay  between  the  Eiver  Shaney  and  the  sea,  consisting  of  66,800  acres, 
besides  woods  and  mountains.  Of  four  hundred  and  forty-seven  Irish 
claiming  freeholds  only  twenty-one  were  to  retain  their  ancient 
houses  and  habitations,  thirty-six  others  were  to  be  elsewhere  pro- 
vided for,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  freeholders,  three  hundred  and 
ninety  in  number,  together  with  the  other  inhabitants,  estimated  to 
be  14,500  men,  women,  and  children,  were  removable  at  the  will  of 
the  planters. I 

"On  the  '7th  of  May,  1613,  the  Sheriff  of  Wexford  proceeded  to 
put  the  latter  in  possession  of  the  several  portions  of  the  land  speci- 
fied in  their  patents,  broke  open  the  doors  of  such  of  the  ancient  pro- 
prietors as  resisted,  and  turned  them  out.§ 

"They  probably  felt  this  all  the  more,  as  they  had  been  previously 

*  Letter  of  Sir  Arthur  Chichester  to  the  King,  Oct.  30,  1610.  Ellis's  Original 
Letters,  3d  Series. 

+  "  Cromwellian  Settlement,"  p.  45. 

i  "  Return  of  Sir  Arthur  Chichester  and  other  Commissioners  to  the  King" 
{Desiderata  Curiosa  Hibernica,  vol.  i.,  p.  376).  §  Ibid.,  p.  389. 


223  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

informed  that  '  nothing  was  intended  unto  them  by  the  plantation 
but  their  good;  and  that  the  civilising  the  country  was  the  chief 
thing  aimed  at.'  * 

" '  They  all  offered,  but  in  vain,  to  pay  such  rents,  and  to  perform 
such  buildings,  as  the  new  undertakers  were  to  perform.' f 

"The  men  of  Longford,  in  their  address  to  the  Koyal  Commission- 
ers authorized  (A.  D.  1622)  to  hear  the  grievances  of  Ireland,  say, 
that,  instead  of  losing  one-fourth,  many  had  all  taken  from  them; 
and  that  divers  of  the  poor  natives,  or  former  freeholders,  after  the 
loss  of  all  their  possessions  or  inheritance,  some  went  mad,  and  others 
died  instantly  for  very  grief:  'as  one  O'Feraill,  of  Clayrad,  and  Don- 
agli  McGerald  O'Feraill,  of  Cuillagh  (and  others  whose  names  for 
brevity  are  left  out),  who  on  their  death-beds  were  in  such  a  taking 
that  they  by  earnest  persuasion  caused  some  of  their  friends  to  bring 
them  out  of  their  said  beds,  to  have  abroad  the  sight  of  the  hills  and 
fields  they  lost  in  the  said  plantation,  every  one  of  them  dying 
instantly  thereafter. '  "  J 

We  have  mentioned  Longford  and  Wexford  here  in  connection 
with  the  Plantation  of  Ulster, — though  the  exterminations  in  the 
former  belong  to  a  later  date,  and  to  a  different  scheme  of  confisca- 
tion devised  by  the  Irish  Privy  Council  and  readily  embraced  by  the 
royal  mind. 

AVas  the  success  which  attended  the  gigantic  experiment  in  Ulster 
such  as  to  induce  the  King  and  his  counselors  to  try  others  on  a  like 
scale  in  Leinster  and  Connaught  ? 

Let  us,  before  we  follow  the  Exterminators  into  these  two  last 
Provinces,  glance  at  the  practical  measures  employed  by  the  Ulster 
Planters  to  "civilize"  such  of  the  Catholic  Celts  as  were  allowed  to 
remain  beneath  their  native  skies.  We  use  the  word  civilize 
advisedly.  For  the  pretext  put  forth  by  the  historians  who  attempt 
to  justify  James'  spoliations,  as  well  as  his  merciless  treatment  of 

*  "  Retvirn  of  Sir  Arthur  Chichester  and  other  Commissioners  to  the  King" 
{JDesiderata  Curiosa  Hibernica,  vol.  i.,  p.  374').  t  Ibid.,  p.  390. 

X  Harris  MSS.,  p.  68.    Folio.    Royal  Dublin  Society's  Library. 


Success  of  this  gigantic  Exjjerime^if — James  praised  for  if.     223 

the  Catholic  population,  dwell  with  special  emphasis  on  the  benefits 
to  "civilization/'  which  the  King  had  in  view,  and  which  these 
measures  tended  to  promote.  Here  are  a  few  of  these  historical  judg- 
ments, which  Ave  beg  the  reader  to  reconsider  and  revise. 

"To  consider  James  in  a  more  advantageous  light,"  says  Hume, 
"we  must  take  a  view  of  him  as  the  legislator  of  Ireland:  and  most  of 
the  institutions  which  he  had  framed  for  civilizing  that  kingdom, 
being  finished  about  this  period,  it  may  not  here  be  improper  to  give 
an  account  of  them.  He  frequently  boasts  of  the  management  of 
Ireland  as  his  masterpiece;  and  it  will  appear  upon  inquiry,  that  his 
vanity  in  this  particular  was  not  altogether  unfounded.  .  .  .  After 
abolishing  these  Irish  customs,  and  substituting  English  law  in  their 
place,  James,  having  taken  all  the  natives  under  his  protection,  and 
declared  them  free  citizens,  proceeded  to  govern  them  by  a  regular 
administration,  military  as  well  as  civil." 

Wondering  if  Hume  ever  studied  the  facts  of  Irish  history  in  the 
original  records,  we  next  quote  the  words  of  a  reverend  author,  who 
wrote  his  history  of  Ireland  within  the  precincts  of  Dublin  Castle,  of 
which  he  was  chaplain,  and  with  the  authentic  documents  piled  up 
around  him. 

"The  passion  for  plantation  which  James  indulged,"  says  Leland, 
"was  actuated  by  the  fairest  and  most  captivating  motives.  He  con- 
sidered himself  as  the  destined  reformer  and  civilizer  of  a  rude  people; 
and  was  impatient  for  the  glory  of  teaching  a  w-hole  nation  the 
valuable  arts  of  life;  of  improving  their  lands,  extending  their  com- 
merce, and  refining  their  manners." 

To  the  favorable  opinion  of  these  two  authors  w^e  might  add  that 
of  Sir  John  Davies,  the  King's  Attorney  General,  delivered  iu 
answer  to  a  remonstrance  from  the  dispossessed  Irish  of  Ulster,  were 
it  not  superfluous.  As  we  have  seen,  this  good  man  was  well 
rewarded  in  fertile  Irish  lands  for  his  services  in  forwarding  these 
plantations,  and  the  eloquence  spent  in  justifying  them.  The  popu- 
lations of  Tyrone  and  Tyrconnel  pleaded  before  the  Dublin  Privy 
Council,  "  that  they  had  estates  of  inheritance    in  their  possessions 


224  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

which  their* chief  lords  couhl  not  forfeit.  .  .  .  That  they  might  have 
the  benefit  of  a  proclamation  made  about  five  years  since,  whereby 
the  persons,  lands,  and  goods,  of  all  his  majesty's  subjects,  were  taken 
into  his  royal  protection," 

To  this  appeal,  the  Attorney  General,  in  conclusion,  would  have 
the  disinherited  and  beggared  people  of  Ireland  be  satisfied  with  these 
assurances:  that  "civility  cannot  possibly  be  planted  among  them 
(incorrigible  barbarians  as  they  are)  but  by  this  mixed  plantation  of 
(English  and  Scottish)  civil  men";  that,  whereas  under  Henry  II. 
"not  one  Irish  family  had  so  much  as  an  acre  of  freehold  in  all  the 
five  counties"  of  the  Pale,  now,  on  the  contrary,  "these  natives  of 
Cavan  have  competent  portions  of  land  assigned  to  them,  many  of 
them  in  the  same  barony  where  they  dwelt  before;  and  such  as  are 
removed  are  planted  in  the  same  county;  so  as  his  majesty  doth  in 
this  imitate  the  skilful  husbandman,  who  doth  remove  his  fruit  trees, 
not  with  a  purpose  to  extirpate  and  destroy  them,  but  that  they  may 
bring,  better  and  sweeter  fruit  after  the  transplantation." 

Poetic  and '  candid  soul  of  Sir  John  Davies,  how  fortunate  the 
English  Solomon  was  in  having  in  thee  such  a  mouthj^iece  ! 

But  let  ns  see  how  it  fared  in  Cavan  and  throughout  Ulster  with 
those  privileged  not  to  be  transplanted. 

Hoiv  the   Ulster  Undertahers  dealt  with  the  Native 
Irish   in  1610. 

Three  kinsmen  of  the  name  of  Blenner-Hassett,  with  nine  other 
English  gentlemen,  were  among  the  first  to  undertake  the  "planta- 
tion" of  GO, 000  acres  around  Lifford,  in  the  county  Fermanagh. 
Apj^arently  the  enterprise  was  under  the  patronage  of  Gilbert,  Earl 
of  Shrewsbury,  who  may  have  contributed  largely  toward  the  com- 
mon funds.  In  1610,  after  carefully  surveying  the  whole  country, 
and  calculating  all  the  chances  and  difficulties  of  their  nndertaking, 
Thomas  Blennerhassett  addressed  to  Prince  Henry  of  England,  "A 
Direction  for  the  Plantation  of  Ulster."  The  memoir,  although 
written  for  the  son,  was  sure  to  be  carefully  read  by  the  father. 


Securily  oiilij  in  Castles.  225 

Indeed  the  main  recommendations  in  it,  are  substantially  the  same 
as  those  Edmund  Spenser  addressed  to  Queen  Elizabeth  in  1598. 
"Your  most  loving  Father's  wonderful  wisdom  and  Industrie,"  the 
memorialist  says  to  the  Prince,  has  "redeemed,  delivered,  and  quite 
acquitted  .  .  .  Ulster,  from  the  usurping  tyranny  of  traitors.  .  .  . 
Despoiled,  she  presents  herself  in  a  ragged  and  sable  robe, — ragged 
indeed,  there  remaineth  nothing  but  ruins  and  desolation.  ...  Of  her- 
self she  aboundetli  with  many  the  very  best  blessings  of  God.  .  .  . 
Fair  England,  she  hath  more  j^eople  than  she  can  well  sustain: 
goodly  Ulster  for  want  of  people  unmanured,  her  pleasant  fields,  and 
rich  grounds,  they  remain  if  not  desolate,  worse." 

When  Thomas  Blcnnerhassett  first  arrived  in  the  north  of  Ire- 
land, to  prepare  the  way  for  his  associate-undertakers,  he  sought 
out  the  Lord  Deputy,  Chichester,  who,  with  the  other  Commis- 
sioners, was  in  the  neighborhood  of  Lifford,  making  a  careful  sur- 
vey of  the  escheated  lands.  "I  being  there  conversant  with  some 
of  the  chief  knights  and  captains,"  he  proceeds  to  say,  "desired  of 
them  to  know  the  cause  why  they  themselves  were  not  forward 
to  undertake  these  profitable  seats  and  rich  grounds."  The  answer 
was  that  it  was  a  ruinous  and  bootless  venture,  as  things  then 
stood.  A  manor-house  protected  by  twenty  or  forty  tenants  would 
ailord  no  security  for  person  or  goods.  A  castle  or  a  fort  might 
serve  as  a  refuge  in  case  of  sudden  attack.  But  "  the  cruel  wood- 
Kerne  and  the  devouring  wolfe,  and  other  suspicious  Irish"  would 
sweep  the  country  outside.  He  gives,  as  a  striking  illustration,  the 
case  of  Sir  Toby  Caulfield,  who  had  erected  one  of  the  strongest 
castles  in  Ulster,  Chaidemount,  and  supplied  it  with  a  good  gar- 
rison and  abundance  of  ammunition.  "Yet  now  (even  in  this  fair 
calm  of  quiet)  his  people  are  driven  every  night  to  lay  up  all 
his  cattle  as  it  were  in  ward.  .  .  .  The  like  I  have  observed  in 
many  other  places :  and  to  speak  the  truth,  all  men  there  in  all 
places  do  the  like,  and  that  within  the  English  Pale.  ...  Sir 
John  King  he  dwelleth  within  half  a  mile  of  Dublin,  Sir  Henry 
Harrington  within  half  a  mile  on  the  other  side  thereof:  few  men 
15 


226  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

that  ever  I  have  seen  better  seated  for  much  good  soil.  The}' 
also  do  the  like ;  for  these  fore-named  enemies  do  every  night 
survey  the  fields  to  the  very  walls  of  Dublin ;  whatsoever  is  left 
abroad  is  in  danger  to  be  lost.  So  they  cannot  for  the  foresaid 
causes  contrive  anything  to  much  profit,  although  it  hath  been 
inhabited  a  long  time. 

"The  consideration  whereof  satisfied  me  with  the  impossibility 
of  planting  a  manor  under  the  protection  of  any  strong-built  castle; 
but  after  I  had  travelled  amongst  the  mere  Irish,  and  had  suflBcient- 
ly  informed  myself  with  their  conditions,  their  nature,  and  manner 
of  life,  I  found  it  most  certainly  impossible  by  such  kind  of  planta- 
tion to  improve  anything  with  security,  to  any  great  profit,  neither 
any  with  whom  I  conferred,  would  or  could  set  down  how  with 
security  anything  could  be  undertaken." 

The  writer  does  not  undervalue  the  importance  and  necessity  of 
"many  castles  and  forts  well  fortified"  for  the  purpose  of  overawing 
the  sparse  population  around,  especially  "being  at  this  present  with- 
out men  of  conduct  or  armour."  These  strongholds,  he  maintains, 
with  their  military  garrisons,  coming  to  the  support  of  each  other  in 
every  emergency,  would  make  the  country  secure  in  time  of  war. 
They  could  then  scour  and  ravage  the  country,  taking  from  the 
"Wood-Kern  "  all  means  of  subsistence.  But  in  peaceful  times  "the 
wood-kerne  and  many  other  ....  do  threaten  every  hour  ....  to 
burn  and  steal  whatsoever:  and  besides  them  there  be  two,  the  chief 
supporters  of  all  their  insolency,  the  inaccessible  woods  and  the  not 
passable  bogs." 

It  is  a  wonderful  and  thrilling  story,  this  of  the  heroic  and  un- 
conquerable resistance  of  a  people,  more  than  decimated  again,  and 
again,  and  again  by  wars  of  extermination,  in  which  all  the  advan- 
tages of  warfare  were  on  the  side  of  their  foes, — the  best  defensive  and 
offensive  weapons  of  the  age,  discipline  in  the  well-appointed  bodies 
of  infantry  and  cavalry,  and  scientific  skill  in  the  commanders.  And 
here  are  these  poor  hunted  Kern,  the  light  spearmen  of  the  Irish 
(for  their  swordsmen  or  Gallowglasses  have  been  slain,  transplanted. 


Heroic  tenacity  of  the  Irish  Kerne.  227 

or  incorjoorated  into  the  Englisli  armies  outside  of  Ireland;  and  their 
nobles  are  dead  or  in  exile,  or  bought  over  by  the  English) — here  are 
these  brave  Kern,  the  remnants  of  the  popular  soldiery,  who  hold  the 
land  in  spite  of  defeat,  disaster,  and  successive  massacre,  hold  it  with 
an  iron  grip  up  to  the  fortified  palisade  of  the  Undertaker,  up  to  the 
strong  walls  of  castle,  fortress,  and  corporate  town,  up  to  the  very 
walls  of  Dublin.  James  and  Elizabeth,  Mary  and  Edward,  and 
Henry  VIII.  in  vain  confiscate  and  declare  Ireland  in  its  length  and 
breadth  to  be  the  domain  of  the  British  Crown;  they  hang,  quarter, 
and  burn  the  Geraldines  of  the  South;  they  hang  tlie  Burkes  of  the 
West  at  their  own  castle-gates;  they  assassinate  and  poison,  when 
they  cannot  hang;  they  banish  in  the  North  the  O'JS'^eills  and  O'Don- 
nells;  and  divide  the  lands  of  the  Septs  among  the  Protestant  English 
and  Scotch,  Avho  will  venture  to  colonize  them  and  promise  to  rid  them 
of  these  "mere  Irish."  But  the  mere  Irish,  as  if  they  were  given  back 
their  souls  and  new  energy  by  the  mother-earth  that  had  drunk  up  their 
blood,  stand  everywhere  before  the  unjust  invaders,  like  the  incarnate 
Spirit  of  a  Land  which  will  not  be  the  inheritance  of  the  stranger. 

"What  shall  we  then  say?  or  to  what  course  shall  we  betake  our- 
selves ? "  Sir  Thomas  Blennerhassett  exclaims.  The  planters  must 
build  themselves  fortified  towns  in  well-selected  positions,  towns 
within  supporting  distance,  and  capable  of  furnishing  each  a  thou- 
sand armed  men  in  time  of  war,  and  five  hundred  armed  cavaliers  in 
time  of  peace.  But  wherefore  in  time  of  peace  ?  Ah,  here  we  have 
the  key  to  the  methods  of  extermination  so  mercilessly  and  per- 
severingly  resorted  to  in  order  to  effect  this  Plantation  of  Ulster. 

"So  there  will  be  help  on  every  side  to  defend  and  offend.  For, 
as  in  England,  if  a  privy  watch  be  set,  many  malefactors  are  appre- 
hended, even  amongst  their  cups.  So  here  when  the  spaces  in  the 
woods  be  cut  out,  and  the  bogs  be  made  somewhat  passable,  then 
these  new-erected  Towns,  intending  a  reformation,  must  often  times 
at  the  first  set  a  Universal  geeat  hunt,  that  a  sudden  search  may 
be  made  in  all  suspicious  places,  for  the  wolf  and  the  wood-kern, 
which  being  secretly  and  wisely  appointed  by  the  governors,  they  with 


228  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

the  help  of  some  Irish  well  acquainted  witli  the  holes  and  holds  of 
their  offenders,  the  generality  shall  search  every  particular  place, 

"For  an  example,  the  4th  day  of  March,  the  Lifford,  the  Omigh 
(Omagh),  they  in  Fermanagh,  Dongannon,  and  Coleraine,  shall  on 
that  day  send  forth  from  every  one  of  these  places  an  hundred  men; 
which  five  hundred  men  shall  as  then  make  search  in  all,  or  in  all  the 
most  suspicious  places:  and  by  being  at  one  instant  dispersed  with 
furniture  fit  for  such  business,  they  shall  discover  all  the  caves,  holes, 
and  lurking  places  of  that  country,  even  for  an  hundred  miles  com- 
pass. And  no  doubt  it  will  be  a  pleasant  hunt,  and  much  prey  will 
fall  to  the  followers.  For  what  doth  escape  some  will  fall  to  the 
hands  of  others,  and  bring  such  a  terror  that  the  wolf  himself  will 
not  dare  to  continue  his  haunt,  where  such  so  sudden  incursions  shall 
be  used,  although  it  be  but  once  a  month:  the  charge  none,  the 
pleasure  much,  the  profit  more.  Then  may  they  make  inclosures 
and  venture  their  cattle  abroad.  .  .  .  Then  may  they  sow,  mow, 
plant,  thrive,  and  be  merry.  .  .  .  And  those  good  fellows  in  trowzes, 
I  mean  the  everywhere  dispersed  creatures  in  the  Creaghts,  seeing 
this  course,  they  Avill  no  longer  hearken  after  change,  nor  entertain 
the  lurking  wood-kern,  as  now  they  do." 

English  and  Irish  writers  of  novels  in  our  day  have  given  us  vivid 
descriptions  of  the  fox-hunt  in  both  kingdoms. 

These  gigantic  "meets"  to  chase  the  wood-kern,  much  more  than 
the  wolf,  afford  a  new  and  rich  subject  to  that  class  who  grow  rich  on 
"sensations."  Describe  each  Hundred  Cavaliers  marching  gaily  forth 
from  these  famous  Evangelical  Cities  of  the  North,  with  their  Irish 
Guides,  their  wolf-dogs,  and  their  bloodhounds,  and  such  other  "fur- 
niture" as  may  help  to  run  down  and  kill  the  game  to  a  certainty. 
From  the  point  of  rendezvous  they  spread  over  "a  compass  of  a  hun- 
di'ed  miles,"  slaughtering  ....  shall  we  continue? 

Unhappily,  we  have  worse,  far  worse  to  narrate  of  English  rule  in 
Ireland  during  the  17th  century;  so,  we  pass  on. 

And  were  these  the  methods  used  "even  in  the  fair  calm  of  quiet," 
when  the  land  was  untroubled  by  war,  to  supplement  the  methods  of 


Ho^o  the  Irish  People  increased  under  the  Harrow.  229 

extermination  employed  by  the  Lord  Deputies,  Lord  Presidents, 
Lords  Justices,  and  Lord  Generals  of  Henry  and  Mary  and  Elizabeth  ? 
Better,  however,  let  Sir  Thomas  Blennerhassett  continue  his  own 
details  of  his  precious  system  of  successful  plantation. 

"Throughout  all  Ireland  where  there  be  forts  and  garrisons  in 
pay,  if  all  those  places  were  planted  loith  this  hind  of  undertaking, 
and  the  old  wortliy  soldiers  ....  were  rewarded  with  fee  simple 
thereof,  ....  their  security  would  be  much  better  and  the  society  far 
excel,  ....  and  all  Ulster  a  hundred  times  better  secured:  for  the 
generation  of  the  Irish  i^who  do  at  tliis  time  increase  ten  to  one 
more  than  the  English,  nag  I  might  well  sag  twentg)  will  never  other- 
wise be  sufficiently  bridled."  .... 

Certes,  if  the  Irish  did  increase  at  all  in  the  midst  of  the  fearful 
ordeal  they  are  undergoing,  it  must  be  due  to  some  preternatural  in- 
tervention. The  "bridle"  which  the  utmost  might  of  England  kept 
on  the  oppressed  race,  was  a  tighter  and  a  more  effective  one  than 
that  devised  by  the  Pharaohs  and  their  people  to  restrain  the 
Hebrews  from  waxing  numerous  and  formidable.  We  do  not  read  in 
Scripture  of  general  "hunts"  got  up  by  the  nobles  of  Memphis  or 
Thebes  to  run  down,  capture,  and  slay  without  mercy  the  Hebrews. 
.  .  .  Blennerhassett  pleads  eloquently  for  the  erection  in  Lifford,  the 
ancient  seat  of  the  O'Donnell's  power,  of  a  fortress  capable  of  awing 
into  submission  the  surrounding  district.  James  l\.  was  not  slow  to 
see  the  wisdom  of  such  counsels;  and  in  1611,  indeed  within  a  few 
months  after  the  presentation  of  this  memoir,  he  took  the  most  effi- 
cient measures  for  creating  beneath  the  protection  of  the  fortress  a 
walled  and  corporate  town,  which  he  made  one  of  the  strongholds  of 
the  new  religion.  For  religion  was,  outwardly  at  least,  the  great 
object  for  which  the  country  was  to  be  depopulated,  first,  and 
then  repeopled  by  Protestants.  "If  the  Lyfford,"  says  the  memo- 
rial, "and  the  lands  adjoining  near  thereunto  were  undertaken  by 
many,  .  .  .  they  would  not  regard  charge,  nor  be  weary  with  labour 
and  pains  to  frame  a  perpetual  security  and  good  success  to  their 
business.  ...  I  might  say  the  like  of  Omigh  (Omagli)  and  Dungan- 


230  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

non,  and  of  many  such  other  places,  and  so  there  would  he  instead  of 
Popery,  true  religion,  and  a  comfortable  society,  whereas  at  this 
present  there  is  small  appearance  and  much  defect  (want)  of  them, 
and  of  all  other  the  chief  est  things  to  make  the  life  of  man  happy, 
only  plenty  of  good  victual  excepted," 

It  sounds  like  blasphemy  to  introduce  religion  into  such  an  argu- 
ment, and  to  pretend  to  make  of  the  holiest  of  all  interests  a  motive 
or  a  pretext  for  sanctioning  or  palliating  these  cold-blooded  plans  for 
exterminating  an  entire  Christian  population.  The  use  of  blood- 
hounds to  capture  fugitive  slaves  in  Jamaica  and  the  Southern  States 
of  our  own  country,  was  a  means  resorted  to  by  some  inhuman  mas- 
ters, and  reprobated  by  the  majority  of  slaveholders:  the  books  of 
Mayne-Eeid  and  Beecher-Stowe  describe  these  hunts.  But  the  pur- 
suit, capture,  mangling,  and  subsequent  punishment  of  a  poor 
viarroon  or  runaway  negro,  although  it  makes  the  reader's  blood  boil 
with  indignation,  sinks  into  insignificance  by  the  side  of  the  gigantic 
battues  proposed  and  executed  by  Thomas  Blennerhassett  and  his 
compeers;  and  then  to  hear  these  blood-stained  men  talk  of  "true 
religion"  and  against  "  Popery  "! 

"Then  proclaim,"  he  continues,  "and  let  all  the  inhabitants  of 
spacious  Britain  know,  that,  in  respect  even  of  their  own  good,  it  is 
convenient  and  most  necessary  that  every  one  of  them  should  in  some 
proportion  put  to  his  assistance.  .  .  .  with  horse,  with  munition, 
and  money,  oftentimes,  and  ever  anon  to  abate  their  insolency, 
whose  pride  sought  to  bereave  from  thee  and  them,  your  right  and 
interest  in  her  (Ulster's)  fields  and  forests.  .  .  .  Do,  then,  and  let 
thy  people  willingly  finish  their  work.  .  .  .  County  of  Fermanagh, 
sometime  Mac  Guire's  country,  rejoice!  Many  Undertakers,  all  in- 
corporated in  mind  as  one,  they  there  with  their  followers,  seek  and 
are  desirous  to  settle  themselves.  Woe  to  the  wolf  and  Wood-Kerne. 
....  Go  on,  worthy  gentlemen,  fear  not,  the  God  of  Heaven  will 
assist  and  protect  you,  the  rather  for  that  simply  of  yourselves,  you 
do  desire  to  perform  so  honourable  an  action."  * 

*  "  History  of  Aflfairs  in  Ireland,  1641-52,"  vol.  i.,  317-27. 


Huw  the  Blennerhassets  extennmated  the  Irish.  231 

Some  nine  years  pass;  Thomas  Blennerhassett  and  his  two  kins- 
men settle  down,  each  on  the  broad  acres  assigned  to  him.  In  an 
official  report  of  1618-19  from  the  Eoyal  Commissioners,  who  kept  a 
close  eye  on  the  Undertakers,  it  is  said  of  the  author  of  the  memoir, 
that  he  had  built  himself  a  stately  stone  mansion  seventy-five  feet 
long,  twenty  broad,  and  two  stories  in  height,  surrounded  by  a 
"  bawn"  or  court  walled  in  and  flanked  by  turrets.  I'here  is  a  church 
begun,  a  village  of  six  liouses,  "built  of  cage-work,  inhabited  with 
English.  ...  In  toto  seven  families,  who  with  their  under-tenants 
can  make  .  .  .  tweiity-six  men;  but  I  saw  them  not;  for  the  Under- 
taker and  many  of  his  tenants  were  absent." 

On  a  second  "proportion"  of  1,000  acres  belonging  jointly  to 
Tliomas  and  Edward  Blennerhassett,  the  reporter  says:  "there  is 
nothing  at  all  built,  and  all  the  land  inhabited  with  Irish." 

On  the  1,500  acres  belonging  to  Francis  Blennerhassett,  there  is  a 
strong  and  spacious  family  mansion,  with  a  well-fortified  bawn,  a  vil- 
lage of  nine  houses  built  in  "cage-w^ork."  "The  Undertaker  was  in 
England,  and  I  came  suddenly  upon  them.  But  by  a  Jury  I  found 
the  land  to  have  twenty-two  British  families  upon  it,  which  with 
their  under-tenants  were  able  to  make  forty  men,  and  store  of  arms 
in  the  house,  and  I  saw  not  one  Irish  family  upon  all  the  lanriy 

So  where  any  member  of  the  Blennerhassett  family  had  fixed  his 
abode,  he  had  succeeded  in  exterminating  or  hunting  out  the  "mere 
Irish." 

As  to  the  remnants  of  the  aboriginal  population  whom  it  was 
found  impossible  to  "root  out"  altogether  from  the  soil,  or  whom 
sheer  necessity  compelled  the  planters  to  retain  and  employ, — what 
were  the  conditions  on  which  they  were  permitted  to  till  the  land  ? 
The  Undertakers, — n>en  like  the  Blennerhassetts,  were  allowed  to 
pick  and  choose  what  was  best:  they  had  to  pay  to  the  crown  a  yearly 
rental  of  six  shillings  and  eight  pence  for  every  sixty  acres, — a  pretty 
heavy  burthen  at  the  beginning.  The  Servitors  paid  ten  shillings  for 
each  sixty  acres.  But  the  native  Irish,  for  the  privilege  of  cultivating 
as   tenants   the   lands  which  had  belonged  from   time  immemorial 


232  Tlie  Cause  of  Ireland. 

to  their  fathers, — had  to  pay  thirteen  shillings  and  four  pence, — exact- 
ly the  double  of  what  the  Undertakers  had  to  pa3\  Moreover,  both 
these  and  the  Servitors  were  allowed  to  hold  their  lands  rent-free  for 
two  years;  but  the  Irish  were  only  allowed  to  be  one  year  free  of  rent ! 

The  inveterate  iniquity  implanted  by  British  legislation  in  the 
conditions  on  which  land  is  held  by  tenant-farmers  in  Ireland,  can 
only  be  understood  by  going  back  to  these  "plantations"  or  "settle- 
ments," in  which  Might  wilfully  ignored  Eight,  violated  all  the  dic- 
tates of  natural  Equity,  and  seemed  to  have  but  one  great  purpose  in 
view: — either  to  make  it  impossible  for  the  Catholic  Celt  to  live  on 
the  land  and  by  the  land,  or  to  render  his  existence  more  dependent 
and  more  precarious  than  that  of  the  helot  or  the  slave. 

Sir  John  Davies,  whose  ability  as  a  lawyer  was  chiefly  employed 
in  covering  all  this  great  scheme  of  wholesale  wrong  and  spoliation 
with  a  thin  varnish  of  legality,  tells  us  that : 

"The  natives  seemed  not  unsatisfied  in  reason,  though  they  re- 
mained in  their  passions  discontented,  being  much  grieved  to  leav6 
their  possessions. to  strangers,  which  they  had  so  long  after  their  man- 
ner enjoyed;  howbeit  my  Lord  Deputy  (Chichester)  did  so  mix  threats 
with  entreaty — precibusque  minas  regaJiteraddit — as  they  promised 
to  give  way  to  the  Undertakers,  if  the  Sheriff,  by  warrant  of  the 
Commissioners,  did  put  them  in  possession."  * 

"We  know,  happily,  what  such  a  man  as  Chichester  could  threaten. 
While  Governor  of  Carrickfergus  he  had  wasted  the  country  through 
a  circuit  of  thirty  miles,  burning  the  houses,  slaughtering  indiscrimi- 
nately the  inhabitants,  destroying  the  harvest,  and  leaving  not  a  liv- 
ing thing  behind  him.  We  know  what  he  did  and  ordered  to  be 
done  in  Munster.  We  need  not,  therefore,  inquire  by  what  "threats" 
he  enforced  his  "entreaties,"  He  was  given  the  CO, 000  acres  confis- 
cated from  Sir  Cahir  O'Dougherty;  and  the  Stratford  Papers  tell  us 
that  he  obtained  "at  one  gift  land  worth  at  this  day  ten  thousand 
pounds  a  year." 

And  so  they  settled  Ulster. 

*  Davies,  "  Tracts,"  284. 


Landlords  of  England  in  1885,  and  Riglits  of  Property.      233 

Plantation  and  Extermination  in  Leinster. 
While  we  are  writing  these  chapters  the  "  nobihty  and  gentry  " 
in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  are  sorely  distressed  by  the  deep  and 
widely-spreading  agitation  against  landlordism  and  monarchical  in- 
stitutions. The  rising  tide  of  public  opinion  and  popular  power 
threaten  the  very  existence  of  the  entire  land-holding  organization, 
from  the  throne  to  the  hereditary  proprietor  of  one  thousand  or  five 
hundred  acres.  Let  them  who  see  in  all  this  but  the  unrighteous 
triumph  of  radicalism  or  socialism,  reflect,  while  they  yet  have  time, 
how  the  Kings  of  England  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries 
did  so  effectually  and  persistently  the  very  work  which  is  now 
threatened  by  the  revolutionary  forces  let  loose  in  England.  Eliza- 
beth, Mary,  and  James  showed  no  respect  for  the  rights  of  the  Irish 
people,  for  the  proprietary  system  in  vigor  among  them  for  long  ages 
before  the  dawn  of  Christianity.  The  possessions  of  the  Irish 
Princes, — the  O'Neills,  O'Donnells,  Mac  Guires,  O'Keillys  (to  name 
only  a  few  of  the  Chieftains  of  one  Province),  were  confiscated  to  the 
crown  against  the  spirit  and  forms  of  the  Constitutional  and  Common 
Law  of  England,  and  irrespective  of  the  inalienable  rights  and 
loudly  asserted  claims  of  the  Septs  or  Tribal  Communities,  the  real 
owners  of  the  soil.  Celtic  Irish  and  Anglo-Irish  ISTobles  were  alike 
driven  into  rebellion,  into  exile,  or  made  away  with  systematically, 
and  through  the  agency  of  low-born,  unprincipled,  and  needy  adven- 
turers, who  were,  in  every  instance,  raised  by  the  Sovereign, — in 
conspiracy  with  them, — upon  the  ruins  of  their  victims,  and  the 
lands  of  this  Kingdom  of  Ireland  divided  between  these  adventurers, 
their  soldiers,  and  all  who  would  help  by  their  money  and  their 
personal  co-operation  to  "root  out"  the  former  owners  of  the  land, 
and  to  repeople  it  anew.  Surely  the  process  was  radical,  revolution- 
ary, and  unrigldeous  enough.  And  now,  that  Irishmen,  who  have, 
through  every  species  of  trial  and  suffering  that  the  more  powerful 
can  inflict  upon  the  weaker,  kept  such  hold  of  the  land  as  they 
might,  see  the  day  of  retribution  coming  apace, — will  not  the  landed 
aristocracy  of  both  countries,  and  those  who  have  shared  with  them 


234  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

the  spoils  of  a  nation, — bethink  them  that  weoxg  was  done;  and  tJiat 

it  must  he  I'igltted  ? 

Those  who  hold  the  throne  of  James  I.  and  William  III.,  as  well 

as  the  heirs  of  the  men  to  whom  these  Kings  gave  the  inheritance  of 

a  people,  mnst  understand  that  the  infinitely  just  and  good  God  can 

never 

....  Aiithorize  oppression;  give  a  law 
For  lawless  power;  wed  faith  to  violation; 
On  reason  build  misrule,  or  justly  bind 
Allegiance  to  injustice. 

The  Plantation  of  Ulster  was  only  the  first  successful  essay  made 
by  James  in  his  wide  plan  of  Anglification.  But  between  the  strag- 
gling colonies  iu  that  northern  province,  and  those  which  he  was  con- 
templating in  Counaught  as  well  as  the  cities  of  Munster,  there  inter- 
vened the  northernmost  counties  of  Leinster.  These,  although 
ravaged  and  depopulated  by  the  Duke  of  Sussex  under  Mary,  by 
every  Lord  Deputy  almost  who  had  come  after  him,  and  by  the  wars 
waged  by  the  Irish  chieftains  among  themselves  and  against  the 
English  of  the  Pale, — contained  many  favored  wilds  and  fastnesses 
mto  which  an  army  did  not  care  to  venture.  There,  contented  with 
being  free  to  follow  their  native  customs  and  to  practice  their  religion, 
shorn  albeit  of  all  outward  state  and  splendor,  grew  up  and  multiplied 
what  the  sword  and  famine  had  spared  of  the  Leinster  Septs,  with 
numerous  bands  of  fugitives  from  Tyrone  and  Tyrconnell. 

James  was  advised  to  "reform"  and  "regulate"  these  central 
counties,  as  he  had  the  neighboring  counties  of  Ulster.  The  his- 
torian Leland,  who  was  interested  in  Justifying  the  confiscation  to  the 
crown  of  all  this  territory,  thus  speaks  of  the  motives  which  actuated 
the  Sovereign  and  his  Ministers: 

"Naturally  strong  and  difficult  of  access,  they  afforded,  in  the  very 
heart  of  the  island,  a  safe  retreat  and  shelter  to  the  old  inhabitants, 
who  were  tenacious  of  their  barbarous  customs,  nestling  in  their 
filthy  cottages  in  winter,  in  summer  wandering  with  their  cattle  over 
the  desert  mountains.  Through  these  districts  the  Irish  insurgents 
had  usually  passed  from  Counaught  or  Ulster  to  annoy  the  Pale.  .  .  . 


WalpoWs  Opinion:  ''Legal  Plundering."  235 

In  time  of  peace  they  were  the  safe  recejjtacle  of  robbers,  where  they 
defied  the  ministers  of  justice;  and,  surrounded  with  woods,  bogs, 
and  mountains,  lived  in  a  sort  of  independence,  and  contemptuous  re- 
sistance to  the  law.  To  reduce  these  savages  to  subjection,  inquisi- 
tions were  held  to  examine  the  King's  title  to  the  whole  or  any  part 
of  their  lands.  It  was  found  that  some  parts  had  been  anciently 
possessed  by  English  settlers,  who,  in  the  disorders  of  the  kingdom, 
had  been  expelled  by  the  old  natives,  and  v/hich  were  tlierefore  vested 
in  the  Crown,  as  lands  of  absentees;  others  appeared  to  have  been 
forfeited  by  rebellion.  So  that  James  deemed  himself  entitled  to 
make  a  distribution  of  385,000  acres  in  these  counties,  to  such  pro- 
prietors, and  in  such  proportions,  as  might  promote  the  general  wel- 
fare and  security,  the  extension  of  commerce,  and  the  civility  of  the 
natives.  The  large  portions  regranted  to  the  old  inhabitants  on  per- 
manent tenures,  reconciled  many  to  this  new  scheme  of  plantation."  * 

To  Lelaiid's  apology  for  iniquity,  coupled  with  aspersions  on  the 
Irish  "  savages  "  and  their  "  barbarous  "  customs,  we  shall  oppose  the 
opinion  of  a  living  writer. 

"James," — says  Mr.  Walpole, — "was  so  pleased  with  the  success 
of  his  plantation  in  Ulster,  that  he  determined  to  apply  the  process 
of  planting  to  the  rest  of  Ireland.  There  had  been  no  rising,  no 
attempt  at  disturbance,  so  that  the  old  excuse  for  confiscation  was  not 
available;  it  was  necessary  to  invent  a  system  of  plundering  by  process 
of  laic  to  provide  the  wherewithal  for  the  vain  monarch  to  reconstruct 
the  map  of  Ireland.  'A  commission  to  inquire  into  defective  titles' 
was  sent  down  into  those  parts  of  the  country  with  which  it  was 
determined  to  deal,  to  collect  evidence  as  to  the  number  and  condi- 
tion of  the  inhabitants  and  their  lords,  what  rents  were  paid,  and 
what  and  how  estates  were  held;  and  to  inquire  into  the  title  which 
the  Crown  had  to  any  part  thereof. ''"' 

So  much  for  the  impelling  motive  in  this  new  campaign  of  spolia- 
tion.    Now  as  to  the  districts  marked  out  for  the  exterminators : 

*  "  History  of  Irelaud,"  ii.,  539. 


236  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

"The  countries  which  were  still  principally  inhabited  by  the 
native  Irish,  were,  first,  the  mountainous  strip  which  runs  from 
Dublin  towards  Wexford  Haven,  sloping  to  the  sea  upon  the  east, 
and  comprising  the  counties  of  Wicklow  and  Wexford;  secondl}-,  the 
broad  belt  of  low  country,  then  largely  consisting  of  bog  and  forest, 
whicli  skirts  the  great  chain  of  lakes  and  rivers  lying  between  Sligo 
on  the  north  and  Lough  Derg  on  the  south,  and  comprises  the  coun- 
ties of  Leitrim  and  Longford,  and  the  western  portion  of  Westmeath, 
King's  Count}",  and  Queen's  County.  These  tracts  were  still  occu- 
pied, the  one  by  the  tribes  of  Mac  Murrough,  O'Toole,  and  O'Byrne, 
and  the  other  by  those  of  O'Eourke,  O'Farrel,  O'Melaghlin,  O'Mollo}", 
O'Doyne,  and  McGilpatrick," 

How  can  the  Crown  find  a  title  against  these  possessors  and  pro- 
prietors of  the  soil,  since  God  commanded  the  descendants  of  Xoah 
to  go  forth  and  people  the  earth  ? 

"It  was  gravely  said  that  whereas  these  countries  had  been  origi- 
nally granted  to  English  colonists  in  the  days  of  the  Plantagenets  by 
the  Crown,  which  had  no  right  to  make  the  grant,  and  these  colonists 
bad,  in  the  evil  days  of  the  Anglo-Xorman  settlement,  been  driven 
from  their  land  by  the  native  owners,  and  had  retired  into  England; 
and  further,  that  by  various  statutes  concerning  absentees,  the 
deserted  lands  had  reverted  to  the  King — the  native  tribes  now  in 
occupation  had  no  prescriptive  right  by  virtue  of  three  hundred  years' 
possession  of  what  was  after  all  their  own  property,  and  that  the 
whole  of  the  land  was  vested  in  James.  Leitrim  and  Longford  had 
been  surrendered  by  the  O'Eourke  and  O'Farrel  of  that  day  to  Eliza- 
beth, and  subsequent  acts  of  rebellion  were  sufficient  to  show  the 
King's  title  in  these  cases,  while  Art  Mac  Murrough's  indenture  with 
Eichard  11.  in  1394,  was  raked  up  to  do  duty  for  a  title  to  Wexford." 

All  this  seems  incredible.  But  it  is  true,  nevertheless.  Let  us 
follow  the  proceedings  of  English  justice  in  the  days  which  beheld 
King  James'  Bible  come  forth  to  illumine  and  civilize  these  islands. 

"To  give  an  appearance  of  legality  to  these  iniquitous  proceed- 
ings, juries  were  empanelled,  and  forced  to  give  verdicts  in  favor  of 


English  Ajjologies  for  Confiscation  and  Extermination.      237 

the  Crown;  witnesses  were  co^npelled  to  give  satisfactonj  evidence;  and 
both  jurors  and  witnesses,  if  they  had  the  boldness  to  withstand  the 
pressure  of  the  Crown  lawyers,  were  hauled  before  the  Castle  Chamber, 
imprisojied,  pilloried,  and  branded.''''  * 

In  very  truth  the  Castle  was  the  moving  energy  in  all  these  trans- 
actions. The  Dublin  Officials  knew  how  to  play  upon  the  King's 
inordinate  vanity,  and  to  hold  out  a  bait  to  liis  insatiable  greed  in  the 
plunder  to  be  derived  from  tliese  campaigns. 

"Wherever  land  could  be  declared  forfeit,  so  it  went  by  every 
low  trick  and  legal  artifice  that  could  be  practised.  It  became  a 
regular  trade  to  jiick  holes  in  people's  titles;  every  trifling  flaw  that 
could  be  hit  upon  was  carefully  noted.  .  .  .  One  of  the  principal 
motives  for  these  proceedings  Avas  the  replenishing  of  the  royal 
exchequer.  If  a  flaw  could  be  found  in  a  man's  title,  he  could  be 
frightened  into  accepting  a  round  sum  by  way  of  composition.  If  he 
refused,  the  land  could  be  granted  to  some  one  else  at  an  annual 
quit-rent,  the  enterprising  'projector'  or  'discoverer'  sharing  the 
plunder  with  the  King."     Axd  so  the  game  sped  merrily. 

It  is  an  interesting  study  to  follow,  throughout  all  the  sliifting  and 
winding  of  their  one-sided  and  most  untruthful  narrative,  the  apolo- 
gist-historians of  Eoyal  Despotism,  Official  rapacity,  and  Protestant 
intolerance.  The  iniquity  which  is  so  closely  allied  with  greed  in  all 
the  administration  of  Chichester,  as  well  as  in  those  of  Falkland  and 
St.  John,  stands  forth  in  such  bold  colors,  that  cloak  it  over  as  the 
writers  will,  it  pierces  the  whole  tissue  of  their  discourse.  "The 
scheme  of  plantation  " — says  "Wright — "proceeded  with  all  its  errors 
and  grievances,  and  these  arose  more  from  the  way  in  which  it  was 
carried  into  effect,  than  from  the  scheme  itself.  The  means  taken  to 
enforce  the  claims  of  the  Crown  were  of  the  most  arbitrary  kind, 
and  were  often  founded  upon  oppressive  injustice.  Men  were 
deprived  of  lands  which  their  ancestors  had  held  through  several 
generations,  on  pretence  of  some  old  resumption  or  forfeiture,  be- 

*  "  The  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  194-196. 


238  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

cause  they  had  no  written  proofs  of  the  regrant.  Juries  refusing  to 
give  a  verdict  for  the  Crown,  were  committed  to  the  Castle  Chamber, 
and  punished  with  fine  and  imprisonment;  .so  that  however  weak  its 
claims,  the  Crown  was  seldom  disappointed  of  its  j)rejj.  Where  titles 
were  forthcoming,  the  slightest  neglect  in  performing  the  conditions 
imposed  on  the  possessors,  even  amid  the  turbulence  of  civil  war, 
when  the  power  of  the  Crown  was  confined  within  narrow  limits, 
was  construed  into  a  breach  of  covenant,  and  was  made  a  plea  for  for- 
feiture. A  door  was  thus  opened  to  a  band  of  discoverers  and  in- 
formers, needy  and  unscrupulous  adventurers,  who  made  a  profit  of 
hunting  over  the  records  of  the  public  offices,  and  seeking  flaws  in 
Irish  titles,  until  nobody  could  feel  secure  in  the  possession  of  his 
own  lands,  and  many  agreed  to  pay  large  compositions  for  new 
grants  rather  than  risk  their  property  to  the  partial  and  constrained 
verdicts  of  juries.  .  .  . 

"In  the  distribution  of  the  lands,  the  King's  directions  were  often 
neglected,  as  far  as  they  related  to  provisions  for  the  original  pro- 
prietors, and  the  natives  were  deprived  entirely  of  those  possessions 
which  were  to  have  been  reserved  for  them.  Thus  in  the  small 
county  of  Longford  twenty-five  members  of  one  Sept  were  all  deprived 
of  their  estates  without  any  compensation,  and  were  actually  left 
without  the  means  of  subsistence.  Thus  exjiosed  to  the  avarice  ctnd 
7'apine  of  foreign  adventurers,  the  Irish,  instead  of  being  conciliated, 
were  hardened  in  the  hatred  they  bore  to  their  rulers."* 

Surely,  after  all  the  solemn  professions  made  in  the  King's  name, 
and  the  hopes  held  out  that  all  persons  in  Ireland  would  be  con- 
sidered only  as  the  King's  subjects,  "and,  as  such,  protected  in  all 
their  rights  and  interests," — this  wholesale  confiscation  of  the  prop- 
erty of  the  native  populations  was  only  calculated  to  arouse  the  hatred 
that  comes  of  the  deepest  wrong  deliberately  consummated  in  the 
teeth  of  repeated  royal  promises. 

The  Irish  proprietors  were  cheated  out  of  the  miserable  shreds  set 

*  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  i.,  612. 


James  I.'s  "General  and  Free  Pardon" !  239 

apart  for  them  from  their  patrimonial  estates,  or  the  lands  over  which 
their  fathers  had  ruled  from  time  immemorial. 

This  was  not  the  only  act  of  grievous  oppression  instead  of  prom- 
ised justice  which  the  Irish  Catholics  had  to  complain  of  at  the 
King's  hands,  nor  tlie  worst  breach  of  faith  solemnly  pledged.  It 
would  seem  as  if  both  King  and  Government  only  promised  to  lighten 
the  intolerable  yoke  borne  by  the  Irish  Papist,  to  render  it  ten  times 
heavier. 

Here  is  another  instance  of  the  same  systematic  deception. 

Be  it  borne  in  mind,  that  in  the  first  jbQjVS  of  his  reign  James  pro- 
claimed to  all  his  subjects  oblivion  and  pardon  for  all  past  acts  of 
rebellion.  In  the  packed  parliament  of  1613,  where  an  illegal  and 
fraudulent  majority  passed  an  act  of  attainder  against  the  fugitive 
Earls  of  Tyrone  and  Tyrconnell,  and  vested  in  the  Crown  the  im- 
mense estates  of  these  princes,  or  rather  of  the  clans  who  had 
acknowledged  them  as  chiefs, — they  also  introduced  the  famous  *''Act 
for  the  King's  Majesty's  most  gracious  general  and  free  pardon."  To 
this  general  and  free  pardon,  however,  there  were  fifty-one  classes  of 
exception,  each  class  comprising  four  or  five  different  sorts  of  offence, 
to  which  this  'most  gracious  general  and  free  pardon'  must  not  be 
extended.  It  was  a  cunningly — one  might  say,  without  exaggerating, 
a  diabolically — devised  scheme  to  bring  within  the  laws  of  treason  and 
forfeiture  every  single  inhabitant  of  Ireland  professing  the  Catholic 
religion  and  belonging  either  to  the  Celtic  race  or  the  "old  Eng- 
lish" stock. 

The  same  grand  process  of  disinheriting,  dispossessing,  out- 
lawing, and  "uprooting"  of  the  old  religion  and  the  old  race  still 
invincibly  clinging  to  it,  after  having  cleared  the  ground  in  Ulster, 
must  now  be  applied  in  Connaught  and  Leinster.  Of  course  all  these 
adventurers  with  whom  Chichester  had  filled,  for  the  King's  pur- 
poses, the  Parliament  of  1G13,  were  to  have  their  share  in  the  new 
distribution  of  385,000  acres.  And  of  course  Chichester,  to  whom 
was  to  be  entrusted  the  duty  of  devising  a  legal  basis  for  this  whole- 
sale process  of  expropriation  of  the  great  and  noble,  of  outlawry  and 


240  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

extirpation  for  tlie  laboring  masses,  was  the  man  to  direct,  in  con- 
junction with  Wingfield,  Archbishop  Jones,  Parsons,  and  Sir  John 
Davies,  the  entire  scheme  from  its  germinal  conception  to  its  com- 
plete execution. 

Davies,  in  speaking  of  this  act  of  "General  and  Free  Pardon," has 
the  effrontery  to  write:  "They  passed  an  act  of  general  indemnity  for 
late  crimes,  with  an  exception  of  Tyrone,  Tyrconnell,  and  O'Dough- 
erty."  And  this  act  was  of  his  own  framing!  Carte,  who  wrote 
later,  misleads  still  more:  "The  session  concluded  with  an  act  of  ob- 
livion and  general  pardon."  And  Leland,  the  eighteenth  century 
apologist  of  these  monstrous  iniquities  and  base  frauds  perpetrated  by 
Legislators  and  a  King, — does  not  hesitate  to  say:  "An  act  of  general 
pardon  and  oblivion  was  made,  in  confirmation  of  the  royal  edict."  * 

The  general  research  for  titles,  and  the  regranting  to  old  proprie- 
tors their  ancestral  estates  on  the  English  tenure  of  fee  simple,  were 
the  opening  up  a  road  to  new  confiscations  and  peculation  which  was 
to  be  followed  up  to  the  bitter  end  by  the  Lord  Deputies  of  Charles  I. 
It  was  all  a  cloak  for  spoliation. 

Figures  have  a  singular  eloquence  by  affording  at  a  glance  the 
results  of  great  economical  operations.  Let  us  see  what  were  the  pro- 
portions left  to  the  People  of  Ireland  in  these  two  great  Plantations 
of  James  I. 

l.—Li  Ulster. 

"The  whole  of  the  six  counties  which  were  confiscated  contained 
about  2,830,837  Irish,  or  according  to  modern  surveys  in  English 
measure,  3,785,057  acres.  Of  this  four-fifths  were  barren  or  'lean' 
land,  and  511,465  Irish  acres  Avere  valuable  or  'fat'  land.  The  bulk 
of  the  Irish  were  cleared  from  the  fat  land  into  the  lean  land;  and 
the   511,465   acres   were   partly  reserved   for   public  purposes,  and 


*"  James  exulted  in  the  cunning;  with  which  he  had  on  this  occasion  weathered 
the  storm  of  Irish  faction;  and  no  sooner  had  the  subsidy  bill  passed,  than  the  Irish 
Parliament  was  suddenly  and  unexpectedly  dissolved,  leaving  untouched  several 
measures  for  the  improvement  of  Ireland,  which  had  been  recommended  to  the  con- 
sideration of  government"  (Wright,  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  vol.  i.  p.  610  , 


Results  of  the  Plantations.  241 

partly  divided  amongst  fifty  English  and  fifty-nine  Scotch  undertak- 
ers, sixty  Servitors,  two  hundred  and  eighty-six  natives  of  'good 
merit/  and  the  London  companies.  The  two  hundred  and  eighty-six 
natives  obtained  only  about  one-tenth  of  the  whole.  The  following 
table  will  show  the  way  in  which  the  land  was  apportioned  : 

ACRES. 

English  undertakers,  50  in  number 81,500 

Scotch  undertakers,  59  in  number 81,000 

Servitors,  60  in  number 49,914 

Meritorious  natives,  386  in  number 52,279 

London  Guilds 61,437 

Trinity  College,  Dublin' 9,600 

Bishops,  deans  and  chapters 77,666 

Glebes  for  parochial  clergy 19,268 

Free  Schools 2,700 

Corporate  towns  and  forts 47,101 

Several  persons  as  abbey  lands 21,552 

Eestored  to  certain  individual  Irishmen    ....  7,448 

Total 511,465 

"The  object  of  James  was  to  introduce  a  thoroughly  Protestant 
and  anti-Irish  element  which  should  dominate  the  Roman  Catholics 
and  natives.  The  success  of  the  Plantation  was  apparent  in  a  few 
years,  when  Commissioners  were  sent  down  to  inspect  the  progress 
which  was  being  made."  * 

Of  this  progress  we  have  had  already  some  idea,  as  well  as  of  the 
means  taken  to  obtain  it,  in  the  recital  of  Thomas  Blennerhassett  and 
extracts  from  the  Commissioners'  Report. 

2. — In  Leinster. 

The  King,  by  the  packed  juries  and  forced  verdicts  described 
above,  obtained  a  title  to  66,800  acres  in  Wexford  alone,  and  in  the 
midland  counties  to  no  less  than  385,000. 

What  became  of  the  native  proprietors  and  their  people  ?     They 


"  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  pp.  184,  185. 
16 


243  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Avere  cheated  out  of  the  small  pittance  allotted  to  them  by  a  lingering 
sense  of  justice  or  shame  in  the  King.  The  English  officials  in  Ire- 
land were  well  skilled  in  defeating  every  measure  which  was  intended 
to  benefit  the  Celt.  There  was  no  attempt  at  armed  resistance;  the 
spirit  of  the  living  generation  had  been  broken  by  a  succession  of  dis- 
asters,— as  bathers  on  the  beach  are  overwhelmed  and  prostrated  by 
the  swift  rollers  pouring  in  on  them  without  intermission. 

"  Many  of  the  old  proprietors  who  were  removed  from  their  lands 
betook  themselves  to  the  woods  and  an  outlaw's  life.  Agrarian  out- 
rages began  to  occur  '  when  the  nights  grew  darker  and  the  winter 
came  on.'  The  Lord  Deputy,  St.  John,  the  successor  of  Chicester, 
endeavored  to  hunt  down  the  expelled  land  owners,  and  boasts  of 
having  exterminated  three  hundred  of  them  in  three  years,  though  he 
adds  '  when  one  sort  is  cut  off  others  arise  in  their  places,  for  the 
countries  are  so  full  of  the  younger  sons  of  gentlemen  who  have  no 
means  of  living  and  will  not  work,  that  when  they  are  sought  to  be 
punished  for  disorders  they  commit  in  their  idleness,  they  go  to  the 
woods  to  maintain  themselves  by  the  spoil  of  their  quiet  neighbors.' 

"  In  the  mean  time  Sir  Eichard  Boyle,  the  Lord  Chancellor,  who 
had  got  possession  of  Sir  Walter  Ealeigh's  extensive  grants  of  land  in 
Munster,  had  been  making  a  most  methodical  plantation  on  liis  own 
account  at  Tallow.  It  was  an  armed  colony  of  522  men:  '  horsemen,' 
' pikemen,' and  'shot-furnished';  every  one  was  a  sound  Protestant; 
villages  were  planned,  and  schools  and  churches  built  for  their  ac- 
commodation. The  Company  of  East  India  merchants  also  planted 
three  colonies  near  Dundaniel,  on  the  coast  of  County  Cork,  where 
they  started  iron  works,  and  constructed  a  dock,  and  built  '  offices, 
houses,  smiths'  forges,  and  other  storehouses.'  So  plentiful  and  so 
fine  was  the  timber,  growing  even  to  the  water's  edge,  that  the  shi]-)- 
building  trade  grew  apace.  '  Two  ships  of  400  and  500  tons  apiece ' 
were  launched  in  the  spring  of  1613." 

The  very  first  buds  of  such  commercial  or  industrial  enterprise 
were  sure  to  be  nipped  by  English  jealousy.  But,  considering  the 
powerlessness  of  the  expropriated  and  outlawed  Irish,  and  the  enter- 


Hoiv  theij  managed  it  in  Dublin  Castle.  243 

prise  of  these  English  and  Scotch  colonists,  backed  by  all  the  power 
of  England,  is  it  not  a  wonder  that  a  single  Papist  or  a  single  Celt 
was  allowed  to  survive  in  Ireland? 

One's  soul  grows  wearied  and  sick  in  reading,  even  in  Protestant 
historians,  the  record  of  such  shameless  wrong-doing.  However,  as 
the  effects  of  all  this  injustice  still  remain,  it  is  but  right  to  show 
by  one  example  at  least,  how  the  Harpies  of  Dublin  Castle  managed, 
despite  the  reiterated  decision  of  the  King  to  the  contrary,  and  the 
clearest  legal  evidence,  to  strip  a  Celtic  family  of  their  inheritance. 
Carte,  the  biographer  of  the  l^uke  of  Ormonde,  quotes  at  length  the 
case  of  the  O'Byrnes  of  AVicklow,  which  came  up  while  James  was 
putting  into  execution  his  scheme  for  the  plantation  of  Leinster. 

The  Commissioners  appointed  by  James  to  examine  into  titles  in 
Wicklovv,  as  well  as  the  other  counties  of  Leinster,  reported  that 
Pheagli  Mac  Hugh  O'Byrne  had  forfeited  his  estates  in  the  rebellion 
of  1577,  but  had  been  pardoned  by  Elizabeth,  who  directed  the  then 
Lords  Justices  Loftus  and  Gardiner  to  make  out  letters-patent  for  the 
O'Byrne's  eldest  son,  Phelim,  granting  him  and  his  heirs  all  his 
father's  estates.  King  James  gave  a  like  direction.  But  the  officials 
in  Dublin  had  been  careful  never  to  carry  out  these  orders.  A  sec- 
ond time  King  James  ordered  that  letters-patent  should  be  issued 
granting  the  estates  to  the  O'Byrne  family. 

Just  then  a  conspiracy  was  entered  into  by  Sir  AYilliam  Parsons, 
Sir  Eichard  Graham,  Sir  James  Fitz  Gerald,  Sir  Henry  Bellings,  and 
Lord  Esmond,  for  the  purpose  of  getting  these  estates  into  their  own 
hands.  Parsons  was  then  Surveyor  General,  and  at  the  bottom  of  all 
the  iniquities  perpetrated  in  measuring  the  lands  of  the  new  plan- 
tations, securing  to  himself,  besides  enormous  bribes  in  money,  a  large 
share  of  the  lands  declared  to  vest  in  the  Crown. 

A  charge  was  lodged  by  the  Conspirators  before  the  Lords 
Justices  and  the  Privy  Council  against  Phelim  O'Byrne  and  his  five 
sons,  accusing  them  of  treasonable  correspondence  with  the  outlawed 
Cavenaghs.  On  March  13,  1G25,  Bryan  O'Byrne,  the  oldest  son, 
and  his  brother  Turlogh  were  committed  close  prisoners  to  Dublin 


244  *  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Castle,,  upon  the  information,  real  or  fictitious,  of  three  of  the 
Cavenagli  Sept.  Meanwhile  Sir  William  Parsons  obtained  from  the 
Lord  Deputy  Falkland  a  warrant  to  the  Sheriff  of  Wicklow,  to  put 
him  in  possession  of  a  part  of  the  O'Byrne  lands,  that  were  actually 
held  by  Phelim.  One  Thomas  Archer,  on  whose  testimony  at  the 
trial  much  reliance  was  placed,  was  a  very  unwilling  witness.  The 
Cavenaghs  were  known  to  be  worthless  fellows,  whom  O'Byrne  had 
punished  for  old  misdemeanors,  and  they  testified  willingly  enough. 
But  Parsons  and  his  friends  on  the  Bench  attached  the  utmost 
importance  to  the  statements  expected  from  Archer.  He,  however, 
could  not  or  would  not  inculpate  the  O'Byrnes.  "He  was  first  miser- 
ably tortured,  pnt  naked  on  a  burning  gridiron,  then  on  a  brand  iron, 
and  burned  with  gunpowder  under  his  flanks,  and  at  last  suffered 
the  strapado  till  he  was  forced  to  accuse  the  two  brothers;  and  then 
he  obtained  his  pardon.  Dermot  Mac  Griffin  and  Caliir  Mac  Art 
(two  of  the  three  Cavenagli  witnesses)  were  afterwards  executed  at 
Kilkenny,  declaring  at  the  hour  of  death  that  they  had  accused 
Bryan  and  Tu'rlogh  O'Byrne  falsely.  Such  were  the  witnesses  that 
deposed  against  them;  yet  on  their  information  two  bills  were  pre- 
ferred against  them,  and  two  several  grand  juries  at  Catherlogh,  not 
finding  the  bills,  were  prosecuted  in  the  Star-Chamber,  and  fined." 

A  fresh  indictment  was  preferred  at  the  Wicklow  assizes.  This 
time  Parsons  and  his  confederates  took  care  to  have  the  Grand  Jury 
well  packed  with  the  undertakers  of  the  neighborhood,  men  all 
interested  in  rooting  out  the  O'Byrnes.  This  time  also,  the  father, 
Phelim  O'Byrne,  and  his  other  three  sons  were  included  in  the 
indictment. 

One  of  the  principal  witnesses,  another  Cavenagh,  was  held  in 
prison  by  Lord  Esmond  till  the  assizes  were  near  at  hand.  "He  sent 
this  man  to  Dublin  to  accuse  Phelim  and  his  sons,  wliich  the  threats 
of  being  hanged,  and  the  promise  of  life  and  pardon,  prevailed  with 
him  to  do.''"'  Two  other  Cavenaghs  were  made  use  of  for  the  same 
purpose.  "One  Nicholas  Notter,  a  notorious  thief,  had  been  prose- 
cuted  so  hard  by  Phelim  for  stealing  seven  cows  and  five  garrons 


How  they  managed  Witnesses  in  Dublin  in  1628.  245 

from  his  tenants  that  he  was  forced  to  fly  the  county  of  Wicklow. 
But  being  afterwards  condemned  for  a  robbery  in  the  North,  lie  was 
sent  back  to  Dubhn  to  purchase  his  Ufe  by  accusing  Phelim  and  his 
sons;  for  which  lie  was  likewise  rewarded  with  apparel  and  other 
necessaries." 

None  of  these  witnesses  dared  to  appear  in  court.  Their  examina- 
tions, or  what  purported  to  be  such,  were  read  to  the  Jury.  Their 
testimony  had  been  interpreted  by  two  of  the  conspirators,  Bellings 
and  Graham.  Lord  Esmond  had  his  own  nephew,  who  was  also  a 
tenant  of  Sir  William  Parsons,  appointed  High  Sheriff  to  conduct 
these  proceedings.  The  foreman  of  the  Grand  Jury  was  Sir  James 
Fitz  Gerald,  another  confederate,  and  a  mortal  enemy  of  Phelim 
O'Byrne.  With  him  sat  Sir  Henry  Bellings.  The  rest  were  men  of 
straw,  dependants  and  creatures  of  the  conspirators. 

Of  course  a  true  bill  was  found.  Two  days  after  this  Phelim's 
wife  died  of  grief  at  the  dreadful  prospect  before  her  husband  and 
her  family.  Other  witnesses  were  now  required  for  the  trial  of  the 
parties.  Bellings  and  Sir  Kichard  Graham's  son,  being  provost-mar- 
shals, undertook  to  press  all  the  witnesses  they  needed  into  the 
service.  "'Tis  almost  incredible,"  says  Carte,  "what  a  number  of 
persons  they  took  up  and  detained  in  close  prison  for  weeks  and 
months  together,  soliciting  them  all  the  while  with  promises  of 
reward  and  threats  of  hardships,  even  of  death  itself,  to  accuse  the 
gentlemen  whose  inheritance  they  wanted  to  seize.  Some  they  put 
to  the  rack,  others  they  tried  and  condemned  by  martial  law,  at  a  time 
when  the  courts  of  justice  were  sitting.  Some  of  the  latter  were  exe- 
cuted at  Dublin,  as  Shane  O'Toole,  Laghlin  O'Clune,  Cahir  Glasse 
and  his  brother,  declaring  at  their  death,  in  the  hearing  of  thousands, 
that  they  were  executed  because  they  could  not  accuse  Phelim  and  his 
sons,  and  the  like  declarations  were  made  by  others  who  suffered  in 
the  country."  * 

The  scandal  was  so  great  that  it  excited  public  opinion  even  in 

*  Carte,  vol.  i.,  p.27. 


246  The  C'atise  of  Ireland. 

England,  and  the  King  sent  over  a  commission  to  inquire  into  the 
facts  of  the  case.  The  inquiry  fully  established  the  truth  of  what  we 
have  said,  and  the  innocence  of  the  O'Byrnes.  Thereupon,  they  were 
set  at  liberty  (in  1628);  but  "not  restored  to  their  estates,"  says 
Carte,  "a  considerable  part  whei'eof,  particularly  the  manor  of  Car- 
rick  in  the  Kanelaghs,  had  been  during  their  imprisonment  passed  to 
Sir  William  Parsons  by  a  patent  dated  August  4th,  1C29." 

"Their  estates,"  says  Mr.  Walpole,  "covering  half  the  county  of 
Wicklow,  of  which  during  the  prosecution  Parsons  and  Esmond  had 
been  put  in  possession  by  the  sheriff  of  Wicklow,  were  not  restored  to 
them,  and  the  plot  in  that  respect  was  eminently  successful."* 

AVriting  this  page  in  Dublin,  in  the  beginning  of  1885,  while  the 
facts  of  the  Maamtrasua  murder  trials,  and  those  connected  with  the 
Phoenix  Park  murders,  are  still  passionately  discussed  in  the  Three 
Kingdoms,  as  well  as  in  the  Greater  Britain  and  Greater  Ireland  be- 
yond the  seas, — we  ask  ourselves  if  the  methods  of  criminal  justice, 
as  it  is  administered  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria,  under  the  direc- 
tion of  Dublin  Castle,  differ  so  very  much  from  those  pursued  under 
the  two  first  Sti;arts? 

If  the  Irish  People  are  tenacious  in  their  faith  in  Catholicism  and 
in  the  Eesurrection  of  Ireland,  and  tenacious  as  well  in  holding  on  to 
the  land  of  their  birth, — Dublin  Castle  and  the  men  who  support  it 
in  England  are  strangely  tenacious  in  holding  on  to  their  traditional 
infamy. 

And  so,  under  James,  the  men  who  ruled  Ireland  continued  to 
sow  the  wind. 

Two,  at  least,  of  these,  will  live  long  enough  to  reap  the  whirl- 
wind. Unfortunately,  neither  they  nor  their  households  were  to 
perish  in  the  storm  they  raised.  And  the  prosperity  of  such  men  was 
not  one  of  the  least  trials  which  the  religious  faith  of  the  persecuted 
Irish  had  to  endure.  As  both  of  them  were  conspicuous  among  the 
English  fortune-hunters  who  found  an  El  Dorado  in  Ireland  at  the 

*  "  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p.  201. 


Par  Nobile  Fratrum.  247 

beginning  of  the  17th  century,  by  giving  a  brief  sketch  of  their 
career,  Ave  shall  throw  a  bright  side-light  on  the  monstrosities  of 
English  misrule  in  Ireland  at  that  memorable  epoch.  The  two  men 
are,  Eichard  Boyle,  afterward  Earl  of  Cork,  and  that  William  Par- 
sons, whose  name  occurs  on  the  preceding  i)age. 

Richard  Boyle,  Earl  of  Cork. 

The  real  character  of  this  great  Master  in  Rascality  was  first 
brought  to  the  knowledge  of  the  British  public  and  the  scholars  of 
both  hemispheres,  in  the  Congress  of  British  Archseologists  at  Can- 
terbury, in  1844.  The  revelation  was  made  by  Mr.  Crofton  Croker, 
and  was  founded  on  original  documents  in  the  collection  of  Sir  Wil- 
liam Betham. 

"Half  the  peerage  of  Ireland,"  says  Mr.  Walpole,  "at  the  time  of 
the  Union  was  composed  of  persons  whose  ancestors  had  come  to  Ire- 
land as  fortune-hunters  after  the  Elizabethan  wars Of  the 

new  nobility  which  sprung  up  at  this  time  and  swamped  the  old 
nobility  of  the  Pale  the  most  remarkable  was  Eichard  Boyle,  '  the 
great  Earl  of  Cork.'  He  was  the  son  of  a  Herefordshire  squire,  a 
man  of  very  considerable  ability,  but  utterly  unscrupulous.  Having 
found  it  advisable  to  absent  himself  from  England,  by  reason,  as  his 
enemies  say,  of  his  'forgeries,  rasings,  and  perjuries,'  or  because,  as 
he  himself  puts  it,  'it  pleased  divine  Providence  to  lead  him  into 
Ireland,'  he  arrived  in  Dublin  in  1588,  with  little  else  in  the  world 
but  two  suits  of  clothes,  a  diamond  ring,  a  gold  bracelet,  and  £27  35. 
in  money.  He  managed  to  wriggle  himself  into  the  oflEice  of  deputy- 
escheator  of  the  lands  of  Munster,  under  cover  of  which,  by  a  series 
of  i'niuds,  he  became  possessed  of  a  considerable  extent  of  the  for- 
feited estates.  He  Avas  twice  indicted  for  felony,  and  committed  to 
prison  in  Dublin  six  times  in  five  years;  but  by  his  adroitness,  and 
the  skilful  use  of  bribes,  succeeded  in  cheating  justice,  and  becoming 
secretary  to  Sir  George  Carew." 

But  we  must  not  let  this  successful  villain  down  from  the  pillory, 
till  we  have  said  something  more  explicit  about  these  methods  so  skil- 


248  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

fully  employed  to  get  into  liis  possession  the  immense  extent  of 
landed  property,  still  in  possession  of  the  family  founded  by  him  in 
Ireland. 

"Some  tracts  of  escheated  lands/'  says  Wright,  "he  appropriated 
to  himself,  and  made  no  return  of  it  to  the  Queen.  Where  men 
came  over  from  England  with  grants  of  Irish  lands,  he  threw  so 
many  difficulties  in  their  way  by  power  given  him  by  his  office,  that 
they  were  at  last  glad  to  sell  him  their  grants  for  a  trifling  sum  of 
money.  Some  of  these  particular  charges  are  worth  quoting,  as 
showing  the  reckless  manner  in  which  the  plunder  and  confiscation  of 
the  Irish  lands  were  at  this  time  carried  on.  One  Henry  Deane,  who 
was  a  principal  witness  against  Boyle,  deposed  that  an  Englishman 
named  John  Rawson  came  with  letters  from  England,  ordering  him  to 
be  rewarded  with  a  lease  of  £20  of  land  for  twenty-one  years  '  wher- 
ever it  might  be  found  in  Ireland.'  When  Ilawson  arrived  in 
Ireland,  he  soon  found  himself  among  a  heap  of  sharpers,  and  learnt 
that  there  was  nothing  to  be  done  without  giving  some  of  them  a 
share  in  his  profits.  He  accordingly  addressed  himself  to  Deane,  and 
gave  him  one-half  of  his  grant  of  lands,  on  condition  that  he  should 
forward  his  business,  and  share  equally  in  the  payment  of  fees. 

"They  then  applied  to  Boyle,  as  deputy-escheator,  to  obtain  the 
fulfilment  of  their  grant,  and  it  remained  with  him  to  particularize 
the  lands  which  were  to  pass  under  this  nominal  rent  of  £20.  Thus 
left  to  his  discretion,  they  were  not  only  offered  lands  of  very  small 
value,  but  the  deputy-escheator  '^  asked  £1G0  to  make  up  the  offices 
and  return,  otherwise  he  would  lay  such  heavy  rent  upon  survey,  as 
it  should  not  be  worth  six-pence  to  them.'  Rawson  and  Deane, 
'finding  this  extremity,'  and  perceiving  that  they  lay  entirely  at 
Boyle's  mercy,  sold  him  their  lease  for  a  small  sum  of  money.  The 
grant  was  still  blank  as  to  the  lands  which  were  to  be  granted,  and 
Boyle  having  now  obtained  it  for  his  own  use,  filled  it  up  with  a  fine 
estate  in  Connaught,  '  inserting  in  the  particular  ninety-three  plougli- 
lancU,  three  qnatrojis  of  land,  three  parsonages,  and  ten  castles  and 
water-mills  for  the  same   twenty  pound  rent  per  annum,  and  hath 


Hoiv  Boyle  managed  the  Dublin  Land  Office.  249 

gotten  a  lease  in  reversion  thereof  at  the  same  rent  for  many  years.' 
It  was  further  deposed  that  '  one  Mr.  Tath  obtained  a  letter  from  her 
majesty  to  have  a  lease  of  £30  per  annum,  which  letter  Boyle  bought, 
as  himself  hath  confessed,  and  thereupon  at  very  small  rates  and 
undervalues  hath  passed  all  O'Connor  Eoe's  country,  who  has  since 
become  a  rebel.  His  country  thus  passed  away  is  about  ten  miles 
long  and  six  broad,  of  the  best  land  in  those  parts.  Boyle  hath  con- 
fessed to  this  examinate  and  others  at  sundry  times,  and  namely  to 
one  Kichard  Leman,  that  he  had  in  Connaught  three  hundred  and 
sixty  plouglilands  and  thirty-eight  parsonages.'  .  .  . 

"From  the  circumstantial  form  in  which  these  charges  were 
made,"  says  Wright,  "and  the  equivocal  manner  in  which  some  of 
them  were  denied,  we  can  hardly  doubt  that  they  were  substantially 
true.  They  show  us  how  the  '  Xew  English,'  who  repaired  to 
Ireland  at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century,  made  their  fortunes,  and 
we  cannot  be  surprised  at  the  hostile  feelings  between  them  and  the 
old  landowners  and  their  tenants."  * 

'  Hostile  feelings,'  indeed  !  How  was  it  possible  that,  humanly 
speaking,  any  but  the  most  intense  hatred  should  be  created  in  the 
souls  of  the  oppressed  ?  while,  as  human  nature  also  teaches  us,  no 
one  hates  more  bitterly  than  the  wrong-doer  himself. 

"This  accomplished  swindler  was  also,  as  one  might  expect,  a 
consummate  hypocrite.  'God  having  blest  him  with  a  reasonable 
fortune  and  estate,'  he  piously  says  in  his  memoir,  his  new  patron, 
the  President  of  Munster,  increased  his  fortune  still  further.  He 
advised  and  assisted  him  to  advance  money  to  the  amount  of  £1,500 
to  Sir  Walter  Ealeigh  on  the  security  of  his  vast  grant  of  land 
(42,000  acres)  in  Cork  and  Waterford.  The  mortgage  was  foreclosed, 
and  Raleigh's  widow  and  children  afterwards  complained,  in  a  fruit- 
less petition  to  the  Crown,  that  the  estates  had  been  'juggled  away.' 
Carew  introduced  him  to  Sir  Geoffrey  Fenton,  the  Queen's  surveyor- 
general,  whose  daughter  he  married;  and  he  knighted  him  on  the 

*  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  vol.  i.,  pp.  618-620. 


350  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

day  of  his  wedding.  Protected  by  Carew,  Essex,  and  Cecil,  with  all 
of  whom  he  was  careful  to  ingratiate  himself,  he  escaped  the  reward 
of  his  misdeeds,  and  was  successively  created  Baron  Youghal, 
Viscount  Dungarvan,  Earl  of  Cork,  and  a  privy  councillor."* 

Sir  WUliam  Parsons. 

This  is  one  of  the  blackest  names  among  the  bolci,  bad  men  who 
have  been  the  curse  of  Ireland.  He  came  to  Ireland  about  the  same 
time  as  Kichard  Boyle;  but  rose  from  a  lower  origin.  lie  could 
barely  read  and  write,  succeeded  in  getting,  like  Boyle,  into  the  es- 
cheator's  office  in  Dublin,  laid  the  foundation  of  his  fortune  by  arts 
not  unlike  those  of  his  worthy  compeer,  married  a  niece  of  Sir 
Geoffrey  Eenton,  and,  in  1602,  succeeded  him  as  Surveyor-General. 
He  was  one  of  the  Commissioners  for  the  escheated  lands  in  Ulster, 
obtaining  1,000  acres  in  Tyrone,  afterward  increased  to  1,890,  and 
2,000  acres  in  Fermanagh.  In  Wicklow,  by  the  infamous  conspiracy 
mentioned  above,  he  secured  above  8,000  acres.  He  amassed  an 
enormous  fortune;  and  together  with  the  Earl  of  Cork,  labored  hard, 
and  successfully,  to  prepare  all  things  in  Ireland  for  the  insurrection 
of  1641. 

"Another  class  of  persons  who  made  their  fortunes  at  this  time 
were  clergymen.  A  newly  ordained  youth,  like  Adam  Loftus  or  Dr. 
Jones,  would  come  over  as  chaplain  to  the  Lord  Deputy,  and  quickly 
be  pushed  into  a  deanery,  or  a  bishoprick,  and  living  comfortably  at 
Dublin,  draw  his  large  income,  which  he  invested  in  land.  Others 
leased  out  the  Church-lands,  and  took  large  fines  for  renewals,  or 
secured  long  leases  of  Church-lands  to  themselves  at  low  rents.  More 
than  one  ample  estate  was  put  together  in  this  fashion,  and  more 
than  one  family  founded  which  will  be  found  in  the  Peerage  of 
Ireland. 

"It  was  at  this  time  and  in  this  way  that  the  new  English  interest 
became  developed.     The  new  adventurers  hung  together  and  inter- 

*  "  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p.  205. 


The  New  English  Interest  under  James.  251 

married  with  each  other.  .  .  .  They  were  essentially  strangers  in  the 
land,  who  felt  that  they  had  gone  in  for  a  good  speculation,  and  who 
would  have  to  do  their  uttermost  to  maintain  their  position.  At  the 
same  time  they  knew  that  they  must  have  ■England  at  their  back,  and 
so  they  studiously  cultivated  the  Enghsh  Government,  and  supplanted 
the  old  Anglo-Irish  families  in  the  favor  and  good  will  of  the  depu- 
ties. They  were  the  embryo  of  the  '  Protestant  Ascendancy '  of  the 
.eighteenth  century."* 

The  Plantation  of  Connaught  Conceived. 

Of  the  religious  grievances  we  have  as  yet  said  nothing  :  they  de- 
mand a  separate  chapter.  But  James,  as  he  grew  old,  grew  more 
needy,  and  eagerly  grasped  at  every  scheme  which  could  bring  him 
money.  He  also  grew  more  vain  with  age.  And,  as  plantations 
were  his  hobby,  he  sought  to  extend  them  to  the  rest  of  Ireland. 
Quite  an  army  of  veteran  officials— the  worn  out  tools  of  a  long  series 
of  oppressions  and  spoliations, — were  pensioned  on  the  Irish  treas- 
ury. But  the  Irish  treasury  was  never  known  to  contain  money. 
Land  or  plunder  were  the  only  coin  with  which  public  services  were 
paid.  James  was  advised  to  discontinue  the  payment  of  that  multi- 
tude of  Irish  pensions.  But  he  dared  not.  His  authority  in  Ireland 
was  only  felt  where  it  killed  and  confiscated,  and  divided  the  spoils. 
Where  it  was  directed  towards  restraining  or  despoiling  its  OAvn 
servants,  it  found  itself  utterly  powerless.  The  corporate  towns  and 
the  cities,  the  strongholds  of  the  English  power  in  Ireland,  had  been 
given  large  landed  estates.  It  was  suggested  to  James  to  resume 
these  grants,  and  bestow  them  anew  on  the  payment  of  a  large  sum 
in  each  case.  But  here,  also,  the  royal  greed  was  baffled;  and  the 
project  was  abandoned  at  the  first  show  of  a  determined  opposition. 

Then  loomed  up  before  the  eyes  of  the  weak-minded  old  man  the 
grand  scheme  of  claiming  for  the  Crown  all  the  lands  of  Connaught. 
A  first  regranting,  according  to  the  forms  of  English  law,  of  the 

*  "Kingdom  of  Irelaud,"  p.  207. 


253  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

landed  estates  of  this  province,  had  occurred  under  the  administration 
of  Sir  John  Perrot.  But  the  clerks  took  good  care  not  to  register 
the  new  titles.  For  these  clerks  were,  at  the  time,  men  of  the  con- 
scientious metal  of  Richard  Boyle  and  his  associates  in  scientific  vil- 
lany.  In  the  thirteenth  year  of  his  reign  James  discovered  this  fatal 
defect  of  formality  in  the  Connaught  title-deeds,  and  claimed  the 
estates  for  the  Crown.  Of  course,  the  newly-born  and  fully-fledged 
brood  of  vultures,  called  '  discoverers,'  were  welcome  aids  ready  to 
James'  hand.  The  re-granting  of  these  lands  brought  a  handsome 
sum  to  the  King's  coffers,  without  counting  the  profits  reaped  by  the 
informers  and  the  registry  officials.  A  second  time,  whether  those 
high  in  office  were  or  not  cognizant  of  the  fact,  the  titles  were  not 
registered.  And  a  second  time,  a  King  who  knew  not  what  shame 
was,  enacted  over  again  the  same  comedy  of  oppressive  peculation. 

Then  came  the  design  of  confiscating  all  the  lands  of  Connaught 
and  replanting  them  with  Protestant  Scotch  and  English,  as  had 
been  done  in  Ulster,  and,  indeed,  in  the  other  two  provinces  of  Lein- 
ster,  and  Munster.  These  projects  seem  so  strange  to  men  of  this 
late  19th  century,  and  all  these  proceedings  and  the  wholesale  in- 
justice and  misery  they  involve,  appear  so  monstrous  to  a  generation 
accustomed  to  the  reign  of  law  and  a  well-ordered  liberty,  that  one  is 
bewildered  on  reading  of  them. 

James  died  before  he  could  put  this  last  pet  scheme  of  his  into 
execution,  and  Connaught  with  all  Ireland  fell  to  the  rule  of  Charles 
I.,  of  Wentworth,  Earl  of  Strafford,  and  of  Cromwell. 

2.  Charles  I.  (16S5-1649). 
Whatever  may  have  been  the  humanitarian  motives  entertained 
by  James  I.  in  the  plantation  of  Ulster  and  Leinster,  or  how  much 
soever  he  may  have  deserved  for  these  achievements  the  praise  of 
Hume,  certain  it  is  that  the  "  civilizing"  of  the  Irish  had  nothing  to 
do  with  his  scheme  for  extending  the  plantation  sj'stem  to  Con- 
naught. It  was  simply  conceived  as  a  device  for  squeezing  money 
out  of  the  landed  proprietors. 


Tlie  Plantation  of  ConnaugM.  253 

The  Commissioners  sent  over  to  Ireland  in  the  last  years  of  his 
reign,  were  to  examine  into  the  state  of  the  revenue,  and  to  inquire 
into  the  state  of  the  incorporated  towns.  These  had,  at  their  foun- 
dation, received  extensive  grants  of  land  on  the  condition  of  building 
and  keeping  in  good  repair  the  bridges.  Avails,  and  fortifications  in 
each  borough.  The  Commissioners  were  to  discover  if  these  con- 
ditions had  been  kept.  If  not,  the  King  was  to  resume  the  cor- 
poration lands,  and  each  town,  on  receiving  the  charter  back  with 
these  lands,  was  to  pay  a  fine  of  £50,000.  The  resistance  provoked 
by  the  first  intimation  of  carrying  out  this  scheme  was  so  violent, 
that  the  King  did  not  dare  to  pursue  it. 

The  western  province  promised  to  be  a  more  successful  field  of 
speculation.  We  have  seen  that  Sir  John  Perrot  had  induced  the 
Connaught  landlords,  under  Elizabeth,  to  grant  the  Queen  an  annual 
cess,  or  stipulated  sum  for  the  maintenance  of  the  army,  instead  of 
quartering  the  troops  upon  the  people.  They  had,  at  the  same  time, 
surrendered  their  lands  to  the  Crown,  and  received  them  back  on  new 
titles.  These  titles,  for  one  reason  or  another,  had  not  been  duly 
registered,  nor  had  the  new  patents  been  taken  out.  The  "Discov- 
erers "  of  James'  time  saw  in  this  a  rich  gold  vein  to  be  worked,  and 
the  King  was  but  too  glad  of  the  discovery.  In  1616  there  was,  all 
through  Connaught,  a  fresh  surrender,  and  a  second  re-grant  of  titles. 
The  patents  were  made  out  and  received  the  impress  of  the  great 
seal.  But  the  offices  in  Dublin  which  had  produced  such  apt  profi- 
cients in  knavery  and  fraud  as  Boyle  and  Parsons,  knew  better  than 
to  register  these  patents,  although  £3,000  had  been  paid  by  the 
patentees  for  the  enrollment. 

So  James,  in  his  last  years,  and  his  extreme  need  of  money,  either 
discovered  or  remembered,  or  was  reminded  by  the  sharpers  of  Dub- 
lin Castle,  that  the  registration  had  never  taken  place.  Here  was  a 
glorious  opportunity  for  the  resuming  by  the  Crown  of  all  the  Lands 
of  Connaught,  and  of  replenishing  anew  the  exchequer,  which  was  as 
insatiable  as  the  maw  of  Niagara.  What  cared  James  that  he,  the 
King  who  had  been  paid  for  these  same  patents,  had  himself  signed 


254  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

them  and  sealed  them  with  his  royal  seal, — was  hound  in  lionor  to  see 
the  omitted  formality  fulfilled  at  length,  as  became  a  royal  contract 
in  which  a  King's  faith  is  pledged  ?  James  was  by  nature  a  trickster, 
a  shuffler,  a  liar,  and  a  fraud;  and  now  he  wanted  money  and  would 
have  it. 

There  was  great  and  just  indignation  among  the  landlords  of  Con- 
naught.  They  knew  it  was  useless  to  protest  against  the  wrong  or 
the  flagrant  dishonesty  of  the  proceeding  threatened  by  the  Sov- 
ereign. They  appeased  the  royal  greed  for  the  moment  by  offering 
to  double  the  annual  cess,  and  to  pay  into  the  exchequer  a  sum 
equivalent  to  what  the  King  would  receive  if  the  plantation  were  car- 
ried out  in  the  way  proposed. 

At  this  point  the  King  died;  leaving  to  his  successor  to  make 
what  he  could  out  of  the  Plantation  of  Connaught.  And  Charles  I. 
was  too  much  of  his  father's  son,  not  to  appreciate  the  golden  oppor- 
tunity and  make  the  most  of  it  in  his  own  good  time,  lie  was  sure, 
whenever  he  chose  to  undertake  a  Plantation  Campaign,  to  have  at 
his  beck  an  army  of  well  equipped  "discoverers"  and  adventurers. 

"The  general  result  of  the  plantation  policy,"  says  Mr.  Walpole, 
"was  to  flood  Ireland  with  a  host  of  needy  Englishmen  and  Scotch- 
men, who  looked  upon  the  country  as  a  grand  field  for  enterprising 
persons  with  slender  means.  The  colonists  in  Ulster  were  in  a  great 
measure  the  scum  of  both  nations, — debtors,  bankrupts,  and  fugitives 
from  justice.  Shoals  of  land-jobbers  and  land-speculators  came  over 
to  obtain  a  share  in  the  general  division.  The  hangers-on  of  the 
Castle,  the  conforming  lawyers,  the  poor  relations  of  the  Council  of 
State,  became  large  landowners  and  country  gentlemen,  and  were  put 
into  the  commission  of  the  peace.  Every  act  of  spoliation  was  carried 
out  under  the  protection  of  the  law;  every  legal  form  and  legal  step 
was  strictly  adhered  to  with  a  surprising  ingenuity  which  makes  the 
account  of  the  most  unfair  and  arbitrary  acts  read  like  a  narrative  of 
strict  but  inevitable  justice.  .  .  .  The  penniless  adventurer,  having 
become  possessed  of  acres,  frequently  by  means  which  would  not  bear 
the  light  of  day,  was  promptly  made  a  country  magistrate,  and  often 


"The  Graces."  255 

elevated  to  tlie  peerage.  ...  He  became  a  small  despot  in  his  own 
part  of  the  country,  having  very  considerable  control  over  the  liber- 
ties of  his  neighbors.  .  .  .  The  institution  of  a  local  magistracy  .  .  . 
was  a  local  tyranny  in  Ireland,  where  the  large  landowner  had  it  all 
his  own  way."  * 

Charles  I.,  on  ascending  the  throne,  found  an  empty  exchequer. 
When  one  reads,  in  the  pages  of  Macaulay,  of  the  hideous  scenes  of 
drunken  debauchery  which  disgraced  the  court  of  his  aged  parent, 
one  can  guess  readily  what  became  of  the  revenues  derived  from 
Ireland,  botli  by  the  confiscation  and  plantation  schemes,  and  by  the 
Discovery  of  Titles  for  the  King  and  the  regranting  estates  to  their 
owners.  Charles  was  too  needy  and  too  unscrupulous  a  king  to  have 
the  titles  regranted  by  his  father  registered  faithfully  as  had  been 
promised.  This  would  have  deprived  himself  of  too  tempting  an 
opportunity  to  tread  in  the  devious  but  profitable  paths  followed  by 
James. 

"A  deputation  from  the  principal  nobility  and  gentry  in  Ireland 
waited  on  the  King,  and  offered  a  voluntary  contribution  of  £120,000, 
to  be  paid  in  three  years,  in  return  for  the  concession  of  civil  and 
religious  liberty.  The  concessions  to  be  made  were  reduced  into 
writing,  and  were  comprised  in  fifty-one  articles;  they  were  denomi- 
nated ''  Graces,'  and  were  in  the  nature  of  a  '  petition  of  right.' 
The  substance  of  them  was.  that  the  King's  title  to  land  should 
not  be  set  up  where  the  owner  had  had  sixty  years'  possession.  The 
surrenders  in  Connaught  were  to  be  enrolled  without  payment  of  fur- 
ther fees.  The  Connaught  landlords  were  to  be  confirmed  in  their 
estates  by  statute,  and  a  parliament  for  effecting  that  object  was 
shortly  to  be  summoned.  All  undertakers  were  to  be  allowed  an 
extension  of  time  for  the  fulfilment  of  their  covenant.  The  extortion 
practised  by  the  Court  of  Wards  was  to  be  restrained,  as  also  was  the 
oppressive  levying  of  the  King's  taxes  by  means  of  the  soldiery.  The 
jurisdiction  of  the  Court  of  Castle  Chamber — the  Irish  Star  Chamber 

*  "  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p.  203, 


256  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

— in  private  causes  was  to  be  restricted;  and  the  testimony  of  con- 
victed and  condemned  felons  was  to  be  refused  where  the  liberty  of 
the  subject  was  concerned.  Eecusants  were  to  be  allowed  to  practise 
in  the  courts  of  law,  and  sue  the  livery  of  their  lands  out  of  the  Court 
of  Wards,  an  oath  of  civil  allegiance  being  substituted  for  the  Oath  of 
Supremacy,  while  the  clergy  were  to  be  prohibited  from  committing 
the  '  contumacious '  to  their  own  private  prisons. 

"  Such  was  the  very  reasonable  liberty  asked  for  by  the  leading 
men  of  Ireland,  which — it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say— if  Charles  had 
honestly  conceded  it,  would  have  reduced  the  Rebellion  of  1641  to  a 
local  rising  without  a  prospect  of  success."  * 

This  rebellion  contributed  not  a  little  to  cost  Charles  his  crown 
and  his  head; — but  he  began  by  walking  in  crooked  ways,  and  they 
led  him  to  the  precipice.  His  duplicity,  his  greed,  his  despotic  tem- 
per, blended  inseparably  together  in  one  fatal  strand  from  the  begin- 
ning of  his  reign  till  its  end,  drove  the  Irish  Catholics  to  despair  by 
making  promises  which  he  never  meant  to  keep,  by  letting  loose  on 
them  all  the  forces  of  religious  fanaticism  and  all  the  agencies  of 
political  oppression,  at  the  very  time  he  gave  his  word  to  restrain 
them. 

No  one,  who  reads  even  superficially  the  history  of  the  administra- 
tion of  Ireland  during  his  reign,  but  will  say,  that  the  Irish  were 
driven  to  rebel  against  Castle  Eule  and  Religious  Intolei-ance  by  an 
uninterrupted  series  of  acts  of  oppression,  scarcely  paralleled  in  the 
reign  of  Elizabeth. 

So,  the  motive  which  led  to  promise  "the  Graces,"  also  led  to 
defer  the  Plantation  of  C-onnaught. 

Let  us  follow  Charles  I.  on  his  course,  sowing  as  he  goes  along  the 
seeds  of  political  and  social  revolution,  the  seeds  out  of  which  is  to 
spring  the  bane  of  Ireland,  the  death,  almost,  of  the  Nation. 

The  Irish  Catholics,  oppressed  and  impoverished  as  they  were  by 
all  the  machinery  constructed  by  the  Reformation  to  crush  them  or 

*  "  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p.  213. 


Ho2v  Charles  kept  faith  with  the  Catholics.  257 

to  cruslx  gold  out  of  tliem,  lieltl  forth  to  tlio  needy  King  the  promise 
of  supplying  him  with  a  voluntary  subsidy,  if  he  woukl  only  stop  the 
terrible  grinding  of  the  Penal  Laws  against  Eecusancy,  and  the  pecu- 
lations of  the  army  of  officials  and  adventurers  who  preyed  uj^on  the 
land;  if  they  could  only  practise  freely  their  religion,  and  have 
security  for  the  possession  of  their  lands,  their  homes,  and  their 
lives. 

Charles  gladly,  greedily  accepted  the  offer;  and  in  return  (162G) 
pledged  his  royal  word  to  grant  them  the  relief  they  demanded. 
This  relaxation  of  various  laws,  by  virtue  of  the  royal  prerogative, 
was  called  "the  graces."  Moreover,  in  1025,  Charles  had  begun  his 
reign  by  raising  to  the  number  of  5,000  effective  men  his  army  in 
Ireland,  and  by  quartering  these  troops  on  the  disaffected  counties 
and  chief  towns  of  Ireland,  eacli  district  to  be  responsible  for  the 
maintenance  of  the  force  thus  sent  to  it.  It  was  a  heavy  burthen  to 
bear  for  a  country  without  industry,  commerce,  or  currency  of  its 
own,  and  its  surface  ravaged  and  wasted  by  a  succession  of  savage 
wars.  The  people  protested,  and  almost  revolted:  "they  only  re- 
mained quiet  because  they  were  told  by  the  Lord  Deputy  that  their 
submission  should  be  rewarded  ultimately  by  some  substantial  acts  of 
grace  and  indulgence."  These  promises  gave  new  courage  to  the 
Popish  party,  who  hoped  to  extort  from  the  King's  necessities  an 
exemption  from  the  penal  statutes,  while  many  were  anxious  to  profit 
by  the  opportunity  in  procuring  relief  from  the  apprehensions  ex- 
cited by  the  recent  inquisitions  into  their  titles  to  their  estates. 
Charles  extricated  himself  from  his  difficult  situation  with  regard  to 
his  two  classes  of  subjects  in  Ireland,  by  that  habitual  duplicity  which 
ended  with  bringing  him  to  the  scaffold. 

"At  a  great  meeting  of  the  principal  nobility  and  gentry  in  the 
Castle  of  Dublin,  in  which  the  Catholics  were  in  a  very  great  ma- 
jority, they  made  an  offer  to  Lord  Falkland  of  large  contributions  for 
the  uses  of  the  State,  in  exchange  for  security  for  their  lands  and  a 
suspension  of  the  penal  statutes.'"  * 

*  Wright,  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  vol.  i.,  p.  615. 

17 


258  The  Cause  of  Ii-eland. 

There  is,  as  we  know  too  well,  sucli  a  thing  as  garbled  testimony 
in  grave  historical  writing,  just  as  there  is  in  the  witness-box.  The 
historian  whom  we  here  quote  has  an  inveterate  habit  of  so  sup- 
pressing the  whole  truth,  or  so  mixing  up  truth  with  falsehood,  or 
of  so  casting  doubt  over  the  plainest  evidence,  that  the  prejudiced 
reader  is  confirmed  in  his  prejudices,  and  the  candid  reader  is  led 
astray  by  his  statements.  In  his  pages  "the  Catholics" — as  he  very 
rarely  condescends  to  call  his  "Papists"  or  "popery  party" — are  rep- 
resented as  forthwith  acting  as  if  the  "graces"  had  already  been 
granted,  and  exhibiting  their  exultation  "in  a  form  calculated  to  be 
most  offensive  to  tlieir  opponents.  Their  conduct  alarmed  the  Prot- 
estant clergy  in  general,  and  excited  the  utmost  indignation  of  the 
large  body -of  Puritans,  who  were  now  settled  in  Ireland.  The  ex- 
citement became  general;  and  Archbishop  Usher  (he  now  ruled  the 
see  of  Armagh)  called  a  meeting  of  the  prelates  to  deliberate  on  the 
danger  to  which  the  Protestant  church  in  Ireland  was  exposed  by 
the  concessions  to  Popery  meditated  by  the  civil  power.  After  due 
consideration  and  debate,  they  put  their  names  to  a  protest  in  which 
they  declared  that: 

"  '  The  religion  of  the  Papists  is  superstitious  and  idolatrous;  their 
faith  and  doctrine  erroneous  and  heretical;  their  Church,  in  respect 
of  both,  apostatical.  To  give  them,  therefore,  a  toleration,  or  to 
consent  that  they  may  freely  exercise  their  religion  and  profess  their 
faith  and  doctrine,  is  a  grievous  sin, — and  that  in  two  respects:  for, 
first,  it  is  to  make  ourselves  accessory  not  only  to  their  superstitions, 
idolatries,  and  heresies,  and,  in  a  word,  to  all  the  abominations  of 
Popery,  but  also  (which  is  a  consequence  of  the  former)  to  the  perdi- 
tion of  the  seduced  people,  which  perish  in  the  deluge  of  the  Catholic 
Apostacy.  Secondly,  to  grant  them  a  toleration  in  respect  of  any 
money  to  be  given  or  contribution  to  be  made  by  them,  is  to  set  re- 
ligion to  sale,  and  with  it  the  souls  of  the  people  whom  Christ  hath 
redeemed  with  His  blood.  And  as  it  is  a  great  sin,  so  is  it  also  a 
matter  of  dangerous  consequence:  the  consideration  whereof  we  com- 
mit to  the  wise  and  judicious,  beseeching  the  God  of  truth  to  make 


Fanatical  Outcry  at  tlie  "Graces.^'  259 

tliem  who  are  in  autliority  zealous  of  God's  glon^  and  of  the  advance- 
ment of  trne  religion,  zealous,  resolute,  and  courageous  against  all 
Popery,  superstition,  and  idolatry.' 

"This  remonstrance,"  the  historian  goes  on  to  say,  "made  a  deep 
impression  in  England,  and  is  said  to  have  had  a  considerable  effect 
in  retarding  any  agreement  between  the  agents  of  the  Irish  recusants 
and  the  King.  The  insolence  of  the  Papists  in  Ireland,  and  the 
effrontery  with  which  they  exercised  their  rights  (rites  ?)  in  public, 
were  looked  upon  with  intense  apprehension,  and  became  subjects  of 
reprehension  even  in  Parliament,  which  complained  of  the  open  en- 
couragement given  to  Papistry  in  the  Sister  Island,  where,  it  was 
stated,  monasteries  w^ere  being  newly  built,  and  filled  with  monks  and 
nuns,"  * 

We  gi  ve  the  comments  of  the  chronicler  in  his  own  words.  They 
are  as  eloquent  of  the  bitter  and  fanatical  spirit  which  fills  his  ov/n 
breast,  as  the  remonstrance  drawn  up  by  Usher,  and  signed  by  himself 
and  his  brother-bishops  of  the  Church  by  law  Established,  is  an  elo- 
quent monument  of  the  intolerance  with  which  Irish  Catholics  were 
pursued  in  the  land  of  their  birth,  even  at  a  period  in  which  Claren- 
don says:  "The  whole  nation  generally  speaking  enjoyed  an  undis- 
turbed exercise  of  their  religion." 

In  the  month  of  May,  1028,  the  King  sent  to  the  Lord  Deputy 
and  Council  his  answer,  conceding  the  "graces"  demanded,  and 
instructing  them  to  act  accordingly.  A  parliament  was  called  for  the 
purpose  of  giving  the  concession  the  form  of  law;  but  a  formality  was 
omitted  in  the  convocation,  which  had  the  effect  of  invalidating  the 
act  passed  to  sanction  the  graces.  It  was  easy  for  the  King  to  correct 
the  error;  it  was  incumbent  on  him  to  redeem  his  honor  pledged  to 
make  these  "gi'aces  "  a  reality.  He  had  received  the  money  promised 
him  by  the  Catholics.  And  yet  he  allowed  the  English  Privy  Coun- 
cil to  declare  the  act  passed  by  the  Irish  Parliament  to  be  null  and 
void.  His  subsequent  conduct  proved  that  he  was  glad  to  be  thus 
rid  of  the  obligation  he  had  accepted. 

*  Wright,  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  p.  616. 


360  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

On  April  1,  1629,  Lord  Falkland,  the  Deputy,  issued  a  proclama- 
tion suppressing  altogether  the  public  exercise  of  the  Catholic  relig- 
ion, and  prohibiting  all  its  ministers  from  "celebrating  their  service 
in  any  church,  chapel,  or  other  public  oratory  or  place  whatever,  or 
to  teach  any  school,  in  any  place  or  places  whatsoever  within  the  said 
Kingdom.  And  we  do  further  charge  and  command  "  (the  document 
proceeded)  "all  and  singular  the  owners  of  such  houses  of  friars,  col- 
leges, monasteries,  schools,  oratories,  mass-houses,  and  nunneries, 
that  they,  and  every  of  them  respectively,  in  default  of  the  persons 
before-named,  their  voluntary  relinquishing  of  the  said  houses,  .  .  . 
upon  pain  to  have  their  said  houses  seized  upon  to  his  Majesty's  use; 
and  both  the  one  and  the  other  to  be  proceeded  against  for  their  un- 
lawful assemblies,  and  maintenance  of  such  unlawful  conventicles, 
and  corrupt  nurture  of  children,  in  the  severest  manner  tliat  by  the 
laws  and  statutes  of  this  Kingdom  and  ecclesiastical  government  of 
the  same,  may  be  had  or  extended."  * 

Lord  Falkland's  administration  was  not  vigorous  enough  to  please 
the  Parliamentary  Party  in  both  countries,  especially  the  army  of 
officials  in  Ireland  who  throve  on  the  substance  of  the  disfranchised 
and  persecuted  Catholics.  He  was  recalled,  and  the  government  of 
the  kingdom  committed  to  the  Lords  Justices,  Eichard  Boyle,  Earl 
of  Cork,  and  Adam  Loftus,  Viscount  Ely.  No  fitter  types  of  the 
reckless  adventurer  class,  grown  to  wealth  and  power  on  the  ruins  of 
the  country,  than  these  two  men.  No  more  willing  tools  could  be 
found  for  the  Calvinistic  School,  already  risen  to  prepotency  in  both 
countries,  and  bent  on  the  extirpation  of  Popery  and  Papists,  than 
were  these  two  men,  as  their  acts  have  too  well  shown.  It  fared  ill 
with  the  Irish  Catholics. 

At  length,  in  1632,  Charles  sent  to  Ireland,  as  Lord  Deputy,  the 
celebrated  Lord  Wentworth,  afterward  better  known  as  Earl  of  Straf- 
ford. The  King  found  that  the  "Graces"  stirred  the  Protestant 
heart  to  its  deepest  depths  of  bitterness  in  both  countries.     Wentr 

*  Eushworth,  "  Historical  Collection,"  ii.  21. 


Strafford  and  the  Irish  Catholics.  261 

worth  was  the  man  to  do  away  witli  them,  while  managing  to  make 
the  Cathohcs  pay  up  to  the  last  shilling  the  subsidies  promised  in 
return  for  these  *' graces/'  He  was  also  the  man, — if  indeed  such  a 
man  could  be  found, — to  make  the  legions  of  officials  commanded  by 
Boyle  and  Loftus  cease  plundering  the  people  at  the  expense  of  the 
Koyal  Exchequer.  Thenceforward  the  plunder  must  go  to  the  King. 
Wentworth  was  also  determined  to  work  out  to  good  purpose  the  two- 
fold scheme  of  James  I.  in  his  last  years,  to  revoke  all  the  proprietary 
titles  in  Ireland,  and  to  plant  Connaught  with  English  Protestants. 
The  Lords  Justices  had  suggested  to  the  King  the  strict  enforcement 
of  the  Acts  of  Supremacy  and  Uniformity.  These,  the  latter 
especially,  as  we  have  seen,  were  happy  inventions  for  obtaining  pos- 
session of  men's  property,  and  of  draining  their  revenues.  Went- 
worth, acting  upon  the  King's  instructions,  set  in  motion  all  the 
machinery  of  these  two  Acts  throughout  the  Kingdom.  The  Irish 
were  filled  with  consternation;  but  the  Lord  Deputy  profited  by  the 
first  moment  of  alarm  to  enter  into  secret  negotiations  with  them. 
"The  instrument  I  employed,"  he  writes,  "was  himself  a  papist,  and 
knows  ....  that  I  do  this  privately,  in  favour  and  well-wishing, 
to  divert  the  present  storm,  which  else  would  fall  heavily  on  them  all 
(the  Papists),  being  a  thing  framed  and  prosecuted  by  the  Earl  of 
Cork."  Thus,  by  threats  and  cajolery,  the  Catholics  were  induced  to 
grant  a  new  subsidy.  This  success,  however,  was  gained  by  the  new 
Lord  Deputy  before  he  had  as  yet  left  England. 

When  he  did  appear  in  Dublin,  he  was  accompanied  by  Bramhall, 
a  creature  of  Archbishop  Laud's.  This  at  once  set  against  him  the 
entire  body  of  the  Irish  Established  Church,  as  well  as  the  Lords 
Justices,  and  Sir  William  Parsons,  Master  of  the  Court  of  Wards, — 
the  most  influential  personages  in  Ireland.  This  sentiment  of  dis- 
trust was  speedily  turned  to  aversion  and  hostility  by  the  affected 
contempt  with  which  the  Lord  Deputy  treated,  on  his  arrival,  the 
entire  Privy  Council.  They  readily  assented  to  all  measures  that 
could  compel  Catholics  to  contribute  money  toward  the  expenses  of 
the  local  government  and  the  replenishing  of  the  royal  exchequer. 


262  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

A  key  to  this  unsparing  tyrant's  conduct  is  given  by  "Wright  : 

"Lord  Wentworth  proceeded  to  Ireland  with  the  resolution  to 
treat  and  govern  it  on  the  principle  that  it  was  a  conquered  country, 
and  that  there  at  least  the  power  of  the  Crown  was  absolute,  and 
dependent  on  no  rights  or  liberties  of  the  subject.  He  looked  upon 
the  population  of  the  Island  as  men  who  had  forfeited  their  civil 
rights." 

He  convened  a  parliament  in  spite  of  the  Privy  Council,  violating 
the  customs  and  privileges  both  of  the  Council  and  the  Lords  of  the 
Pale.  He  packed  the  parliament  with  his  own  creatures,  so  far  as  he 
could,  the  Catholic  clergy  opposing  his  candidates  and  resolutely 
advising  their  people  to  vote  for  none  but  men  of  their  own  faith. 
The  House  of  Commons  and  the  Privy  Council  were  brow-beaten  and 
bullied  into  granting  the  subsidies  demanded  by  the  Lord  Deputy. 
The  House  of  Lords  resisted  vigorously,  but  to  no  purpose.  He  then 
induced  the  Privy  Council  to  declare  many  of  "the  Graces  "  incon- 
sistent with  the  interests  of  the  Crown,  and  made  them  petition  the 
King  to  repeal  them. 

He  had  obtained  all  he  wanted  from  Parliament  and  the  Privy 
Council, — abundant  supplies,  and  the  virtual  abolition  of  the 
"Graces."  He  now  called  together  the  clergy  of  the  Established 
Church,  and  bullied  them  in  the  same  way. 

"The  Confession  of  the  Anglo-Irish  Church,  as  drawn  up  by 
Usher,  was  more  anti-Catholic  than  that  established  in  England;  and 
it  was  one  of  the  objects  of  Wentworth's  mission  to  establish  a  uni- 
formity between  the  tAvo  churches  in  form  and  doctrine.  .  .  .  (The 
clergy)  willingly  granted  the  subsidies  and  then  entered  upon  the 
consideration  of  ecclesiastical  reforms,  which  were  rendered  necessary 
by  the  disorders  that  had  crept  into  the  Protestant  Church  in  that 
island — sectarian-  differences,  alienation  of  church  property,  ignorance 
and  negligence  in  the  clergy.  The  Lord  Deputy  ....  reckoned  fully 
upon  the  same  subserviency  among  the  clergy  which  he  had  found 
elsewhere."  He  wished  them  to  accept  entire  the  Articles  of  the 
Church  of  England;  Usher  had  encouraged  him  to  hope  for  a  ready 


Hoit)  Strafford  went  about  the  work  of  Confiscation.         263 

acquiescence.  Everything,  at  first,  took  a  course  quite  in  opposition 
to  his  wishes.  He  drew  up  himself  a  Canon  adopting  the  Church  of 
England  Articles  in  their  integrity,  had  it  voted  and  accepted  with- 
out discussion!  And  he  boasted  of  his  triumph  as  of  a  something 
great  and  meritorious.* 

Such  was  the  man,  who  then  bent  his  whole  mind  and  his  whole 
strength  on  taking  away  from  the  Irish  Celt  and  the  Anglo-Irish 
Catholic  every  acre  of  land  left  unconfiscated  in  Ireland.  "The 
landholders  of  Connaught,"  says  Wright,  "had,  by  their  share  in 
giving  the  voluntary  contribution,  the  privilege  of  being  no  longer 
molested  in  their  just  titles  to  their  estates,  which  had  been  threat- 
ened by  the  late  King's  rage  for  plantations.  The  plunder  (for  in 
the  manner  the  inquiry  was  conducted  it  deserves  no  better  name) 
was  too  tempting  to  be  foregone,  and  the  equitable  law  established  in 
England,  which  made  sixty  years'  possession  a  title,  was  refused, 
because  it  stood  in  the  way  of  the  royal  designs  of  confiscation.  In 
the  correspondence  between  the  King  and  his  Ministers  and  the  Lord 
Deputy,  the  existence  of  this  scheme  of  inquisition  into  the  titles  of 
the  estates  of  the  lords  and  gentlemen  of  Connaught,  as  one  of  the 
grand  objects  of  Wentworth's  mission,  is  not  denied.  But  it  was  an 
act  of  bold  rapacity  at  wliich  the  Lord  Deputy  at  first  shrunk,  and  in 
some  of  his  letters  he  confesses  his  inability  to  discover  any  pretext . 
for  laying  claim  to  them.  By  Hhe  graces,'  as  originally  granted,  the 
King  had  virtually  pledged  his  own  word  that  the  Irish  landholders 
should  not  be  molested  in  their  titles.  Of  these  '^graces,'  however, 
the  King  had  now  been  relieved  by  a  discreditable  stratagem,  and  in 
the  summer  of  1635  Wentworth  proceeded  to  find  what  he  calls  the 
King's  'just  and  honourable  title '  to  the  estates  in  Connaught." 

He  would  trust  to  no  subordinate,  no  matter  how  able  and 
willing,  the  carrying  out  of  this  grand  scheme  of  plunder.  Com- 
manding the  attendance  of  the  Judges  and  the  Crown  lawyers, 
Wentworth   opened   his  "inquisition"   in   Roscommon,    summoned 

*  Wrij^bt,  i.,  p.  638. 


364  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

before  himself  and  the  Commissioners  the  leading  landholders  of  tiie 
county.  He  said  the  purpose  of  their  coming  was  '  to  find  a  clear  and 
undoubted  title  in  the  Crown  to  the  province  of  Connaught/  and 
urged  them  to  be  the  King's  advocates  with  their  fellow  landlords. 
He  then  formed  a  jury  of  the  wealthiest  men^  with  the  avowed  deter- 
mination to  make  them  "find  for  the  King,"  or  beggar  them  by  fines, 
and  kill  them  by  the  hardships  of  imprisonment.  He  told  them, — 
which  was  another  cover  for  crushing  the  class  of  Catholic  lawyers, 
— that  in  the  inquiry  they,  the  proprietors,  should  have  the  unprece- 
dented favor  of  using  counsel. 

The  proceedings  were  opened,  and  the  landholders  petitioned  for 
delay;  but  the  demand  was  derided  as  a  false  pretext.  The  jurymen 
were  advised  to  find  for  the  King,  else  means  of  more  effective  per- 
suasion should  be  used  against  them.  And  to  enlist  the  Judges' 
personal  interest  in  the  cause,  the  Lord  Chief  Justice  and  the  Lord 
Chief  Baron  were  promised  four  shillings  in  the  pound  out  of  the 
entire  yearly  rent  to  accrue  to  the  King  from  the  results  of  this 
Commission. 

Of  course  Eoscommon  was  terrified  into  yielding  all  that  Went- 
wortli  demanded.  The  jurymen  found  and  the  Judges  ratified  the 
King's  title  "without  scruple  or  hesitation."  So  did  the  counties  of 
Sligo  and  Mayo.  The  practical  working  of  the  newly  introduced 
English  Law  was  irresistible.  Men  submitted  to  be  plundered. 
Tliey  had  plundered  the  Native  Celts  some  time  before;  and  now 
their  own  turn  had  come. 

There  remained  the  county  Galway,  where  the  Earl  of  Clanrick- 
ard,  knighted  at  the  battle  of  Kinsale  by  Mountjoy,  was  lord  para- 
mount. The  Commission  held  its  court  in  Clanrickard's  own  house 
at  Portumna.  Wentworth  plied  the  Sheriff  and  Jury  with  alternate 
cajoleries  and  threats.  But  they  "most  obstinately  and  perversely 
refused  to  find  for  his  Majesty." 

The  threats  were  now  put  into  execution.  The  Sheriff  was  fined 
£1,000  for  having  "packed"  his  jury  with  such  perverse  individuals; 
and  the  jurymen  were  cited  before  the  Star  Chamber  in  Dublin  Castle 


Strafford  destroys  the  Woollen  Trade.  265 

and  fined  £4,000  each  for  daring  to  resist  the  self-evident  justice  of 
the  King's  title.  The  Earl  of  Clanrickard  himself  died  soon  after- 
ward, humiliated  and  broken-hearted.  The  Catholic  lawyers  who 
had  dared  to  take  up  the  cause  of  the  landholders,  were  peremptorily 
challenged  to  take  the  Oath  of  Supremacy;  and,  on  their  refusal,  dis- 
barring and  disqualifying  them  for  their  profession.  When  their 
clients  sent  some  of  their  number  to  England  as  a  deputation  to  the 
King,  the  selfish  and  unscrupulous  tyrant  was  persuaded  to  send  them 
back  prisoners  to  the  Lord  Deputy,  to  be  dealt  with  as  he  might 
determine. 

Such  was  Charles  I.;  and  such  was  Wentworth,  his  deputy  in 
Ireland. 

That  Wentworth's  purpose  in  thus  despoiling  the  landholders  of 
Galway, — of  the  whole  of  Connaught  indeed, — was  to  root  out  the 
Irish,  we  are  assured  by  himself.  "There  is  now,"  he  says,  "a  fair 
opportunity  put  into  liis  Majesty's  hands  to  lay  a  sure  foundation  for 
reducing  and  securing  this  county  of  Galway  ....  by  fully  lining 
and  planting  it  with  English,  which  could  not  have  been  so  thor- 
oughly done,  as  for  the  public  safety  is  necessary,  if  the  pretended 
owners  of  lands  in  this  county  have  not  a  greater  proportion  taken 
from  them  than  is  appointed  by  the  articles  of  plantation  to  be 
applied  to  his  Majesty's  benefit  in  the  other  three  counties."  * 

From  the  articles  of  impeachment  drawn  up  against  him,  we  find 
that  "he  did  declare  and  publish  that  Ireland  was  a  conquered 
nation;  and  that  the  King  might  do  with  them  (the  Irish)  what  he 
pleased.''''  f 

His  arbitrary  rule  destroyed  the  woollen  trade  in  Ireland,  the 
chief  industry  in  an  agricultural  and  pastural  country,  where  a  state 
of  chronic  warfare  and  disturbance  was  so  baneful  to  trade  and  com- 
merce. The  woollen  industry,  moreover,  was  suppressed  by  him  for 
the  express  purpose  of  rendering  Ireland  more  dependent  on  Eng- 
land, by  compelling  her  to  receive  from  the  latter  the  very  raiment 

*  Strafford  Papers,  ii.,  453. 

t  Baker,  "  Chronicles  of  the  Kings  of  England,"  p.  499. 


266  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

necessary  in  a  northern  clime.  He  is  credited  with  having  founded 
or  revived  the  manufacture  of  linen.  This  industry,  so  flourishing  in 
the  island  from  ancient  times,  may  have  indeed  declined,  as  was 
natural  and  inevitable,  during  the  Elizabethan  wars  and  the  calami- 
tous reign  of  James  I.  But  the  revival, — if  indeed  he  should  be 
credited  with  it, — was  far  from  compensating  the  loss  entailed  on  the 
country  by  the  sacrifice  of  the  woollen  trade.  That  he  did  greatly 
encourage  the  growth  and  manufacture  of  linen,  may  be  confessed  to 
his  credit.  Still,  it  is  no  less  certain  that  he  ruined  the  woollen 
manufactures  in  which  Ireland  successfully  competed  with  England 
in  foreign  markets. 

The  Religious  Side  of  the  Question  of  Wrong -doing. 

In  the  last  century  a  Protestant  by  birth,  education,  and  life-long 
profession,  and  the  greatest  man  whom  Ireland  has  ever  produced, 
wrote  these  pregnant  and  memorable  words:  "Protestant  ascendancy 
is  neither  more  nor  less  than  the  resolution  of  one  set  of  people 
in  Ireland  to  consider  themselves  as  the  sole  citizens  in  the  common- 
wealth— and  to  keep  a  dominion  over  the  rest  by  reducing  them  to 
absolute  slavery,  under  a  military  power."  * 

This  mucli  must  be  said,  however,  in  speaking  of  Protestant  As- 
cendancy as  it  existed  in  the  days  of  Burke,  that  it  is  only  a|>ts  alter , 
imposed  by  the  necessity  of  circumstances,  and  accepted  even  at  this 
day  (December,  1884),  with  extreme  reluctance  by  the  dominant 
party.  All  the  attempts  to  exterminate  the  Irish  race,  and  with  them 
the  Catholic  religion,  having  failed,  the  Puritans  and  Irish  Church- 
men agreed  upon  effective  measures  to  stop  the  growth  of  the  hated 
creed,  and  to  degrade  it  utterly  by  making  of  it  the  proscribed 
religion  of  slaves. 

But  there  is  a  large  class  of  most  estimable  men,  whose  souls  re- 
coil from  the  idea  that  it  could  have  been  at  any  time  the  deliberate 
purpose  of  English  or  Irish  Protestants  to  exterminate  the  pro- 


*  Burke's  "Works,"  vol.  v.,  p.  239. 


Parsons  and  Borlase  for  Extermination.  267 

fessors  of  "popery,"  still  less  to  involve  in  one  indiscriminate  decree 
of  extirpation  and  slaughter  all  the  Celtic  Irish  and  Catholics.  It  is 
not  a  pleasant  task  to  convince  them  that  such  is  unquestionably  the 
fact. 

"The  favourite  object  of  the  Irish  governors,  and  the  English  par- 
liament, was  the  utter  extermination  of  all  the  Catholic  inhabitants 
of  Ireland.  Their  estates  were  already  marked  out  and  allotted  to 
their  conquerors;  so  that  they  and  their  posterity  were  consigned  to 
inevitable  ruin."  * 

Such  is  the  general  purpose  attributed  to  the  English  rulers  of 
Ireland  by  one  who  was  an  ordained  minister  of  that  same  Protestant 
Ascendancy.     Elsewhere,  he  is  more  particular. 

"The  great  body  of  the  Covenanters  in  Ulster  despised  the  whole 
negotiation  (the  '  cessation  of  arms '  between  the  Confederated  Cath- 
olics and  the  Marquis  of  Ormonde);  the  Parliamentarians  of  Munster 
opposed  any  peace  with  the  Irish.  These  reformers,  in  the  fulness 
of  their  zeal,  could  be  contented  only  with  the  extirpation  of  popery 
and  the  rebellious  Irish  race."  f 

That  it  was  the  deliberate  purpose  of  the  government  adminis- 
tered, in  1641-42,  by  the  Lords  Justices  Parsons  and  Borlase,  we 
have  from  the  then  Lord  Lieutenant  himself,  Ormonde: 

"There  is  too  much  reason  to  think,  that,  as  the  lords  Justices 
really  wished  the  rebellion  to  spread,  and  more  gentlemen  of  estates 
to  be  involved  in  it,  that  the  forfeitures  might  be  the  greater,  and  a 
general  plantation  be  carried  on  by  a  new  set  of  English  Protestants, 
all  over  the  Kingdom,  to  the  ruin  and  expulsion  of  all  the  old  Eng- 
lish and  Natives  that  were  Roman  Catholics;  so  to  promote  what 
they  wished,  they  gave  out  speeches  upon  occasions,  insinuating  such 
a  design,  and  that  in  a  short  time  there  would  not  be  a  Roman  Cath- 
olic left  in  the  Kingdom.  It  is  no  small  confirmation  of  this  notion, 
that  the  Earl  of  Ormonde,  in  his  letters  of  January  27th,  and  Feb- 
ruary 25th,  1641-42,  to  Sir  W.  St.  Leger,  imimtes  the  general  revolt 

*  Leland,  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  iii.,  192.  t  Ibidem,  331. 


268  Tlie  Cause  of  Ireland. 

of  the  nation,  then  far  advanced,  to  the  jJitMishmg  of  such  a  design j 
and  when  a  person  of  his  great  modesty  and  temper^  the  most  averse 
in  his  nature  to  speak  his  sentiments  of  what  he  could  not  hut  con- 
demn in  others,  and  who,  when  obhged  to  do  so,  does  it  always  in 
the  gentlest  expressions,  is  drawn  to  express  such  an  opinion,  the  case 
must  be  very  notorious.  I  do  not  find  that  the  copies  of  those  letters 
are  preserved:  but  the  original  of  Sir  W.  St.  Leger's,  in  answer  to 
them,  sufiiciently  shows  it  to  be  his  lordship's  opinion;  for,  after 
acknowledging  the  receipt  of  these  two  letters,  he  usetli  these  words: 
*  The  undue  promulgation  of  that  severe  determination  to  extirpate 
the  Irish  and  papacy  out  of  the  Kingdom,  your  lordship  rightly 
apprehends  to  be  too  unseasonably  published.'"* 

Elsewhere  Carte  is,  if  possible,  more  explicit  still  on  this  design  of 
the  Dublin  Officials  in  conjunction  with  the  English  Parliament,  the 
Puritans  in  both  countries,  and  all  who  upheld  the  Solemn  League 
and  Covenant.  "These  propositions,"  he  says, ^' certainly  came  from 
some  of  that  party  of  men  which  first  formed  the  design  of  an  extir- 
pation of  the  Eoman  Catholicks,  and,  by  publishing  that  design, 
made  the  rebellion  so  general  as  it  proved  at  last.  They  all  breathed 
the  same  spirit;  and  though  extirpation  both  of  nation  and  religion 
was  not  expressly  mentioned,  yet  it  seemed  to  be  contrived  effectually 
in  all  the  propositions.  Tliey  appeared  so  monstrous  and  unreason- 
able, that  it  was  thought  they  could  proceed  from  nothing  but  a  high 
degree  of  madness  or  malice."  f 

The  existence  of  the  desigii,  and  the  manifestation  of  it  long 
before  the  rebellion  of  Oct.  23,  1641,  and  for  the  avowed  purpose  of 
inciting  to  this  rebellion  and  making  it  general, — are  historical  facts 
too  well  established  by  Protestants  themselves,  to  require  more  than 
a  mere  mention. 

One  class  of  documents  have  been  overlooked  in  connection  with 
this  point, — the  "remonstrances  "  and  "declarations  of  grievances" 
issued  by  the  Catholics  themselves,  when  driven  to  defend,  by  force 

*  Carte,  i.,  p.  263.  t  Ibidem,  p.  502. 


The  Catliolic  Body  affirm  tlie  existence  of  suclt  a  Purpose.     269 

of  arms,  the  dearest  and  most  essential  riglits  of  liuman  beings  and 
Christian  men, — liberty  of  conscience  and  the  riglit  to  live  on  their 
native  soil. 

"1.  It  was  plotted  and  resolved  by  the  Puritans  of  England,  Hoot- 
land,  and  Ireland,  to  extinguish  quite  the  Catholic  religion,  and  the 
professors  and  maintainors  thereof,  out  of  all  those  kingdoms;  and  to 
put  all  Catholics  of  this  realm  to  the  sword,  that  would  not  conform 
themselves  to  the  Protestant  religion, 

"2.  The  State  of  Ireland  (that  is,  the  local  government  in  Ire- 
land) did  publicly  declare  that  they  would  root  out  of  this  realm  all 
the  natives,  and  make  a  total  second  conquest  of  the  land,  alleging, 
that  they  were  not  safe  with  them. 

"3.  All  the  natives  here  were  deprived  of  the  benefit  of  the 
ancient  fundamental  laws,  liberties,  and  privileges,  due  by  all  \xv*r^ 
and  justice  to  a  free  people  and  nation,  and  more  particularly  duo  by 
the  municipal  laws  of  Ireland. 

"4.  That  the  subjects  of  Ireland,  especially  the  Irish,  were  thrust 
out  forcibly  from  their  ancient  possessions,  against  law,  without  color 
or  right;  and  could  not  have  propriety  (ownership)  or  security  in 
their  estates,  goods,  or  other  rights,  but  were  wholly  subject  to  an 
arbitrary  power,  and  tyrannical  government,  these  forty  years  past, 
without  hope  of  relief  or  redress. 

"5.  Their  native  youth  here,  debarred  by  the  practice  of  the 
State  from  all  learning  and  education,  in  that  the  one  only  Uni- 
versity here  excludes  all  Catholics  thence;  neither  are  they  suffered  to 
acquire  learning  or  breeding  beyond  seas,  of  purpose  to  make  them 
rude  and  ignorant  of  all  letters. 

"6.  The  Catholics  of  this  realm  are  not  admitted  to  any  dignity, 
place,  or  office,  either  military  or  civil,  spiritual  or  temporal,  but  the 
same  conferred  upon  unworthy  persons,  and  men  of  no  quality,  who 
purchase  it  for  money,  or  favour,  and  not  by  merit. 

"10.  All  their  heavy  and  insufferable  pressures  prosecuted  and 
laboured  by  the  natives  of  this  Kingdom,  with  much  suit,  expense, 
and  importunity,  both  in  Parliament  here,  and  in  England  before  his 


270  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Majesty,  to  be  redressed, ^ — yet  could  never  be  brought  to  any  happy 
condusion,  or  as  much  as  hope  of  contentment,  but  always  eluded 
with  delays. 

"11.  Common  justice,  and  the  rights  and  privileges  of  Parliament, 
denied  to  all  the  natives  of  the  realm;  and  the  ancient  course  of  par- 
liamentary proceeding  wholly  declined. 

"16.  The  many  horrid  murders,  robberies,  pillages,  waste,  burn- 
ings, and  other  execrable  crueltie,  perpetrated  of  late  by  the  Protes- 
tant armies  here,  by  public  direction  of  the  State  of  this  realm.  .  .  . 

"  17.  All  the  natives  in  the  English  Plantations  of  this  realm  were 
disarmed  by  proclamation,  and  the  Protestant  Plantators  armed,  and 
tied  by  the  conditions  of  their  plantations  to  have  arms,  and  to  keep 
certain  numbers  of  horse  and  foot  continually  upon  their  lands,  by 
wliicli  advantage  many  thousands  of  the  natives  were  expulsed  out  of 
their  possessions,  and  as  many  hanged  by  martial  law,  without 
cause,  and  against  the  laws  of  this  realm;  and  many  of  them  other- 
wise destroyed,  and  made  away,  by  sinister  means  and  practices. 

"18.  Half  this  realm  was  found  to  belong  unto  his  Majesty,  as 
his  ancient  demesne  and  inheritance,  upon  old  feigned  titles  of  three 
hundred  years  past,  by  juries,  against  law,  their  evidence,  and  con- 
science, who  were  corrupted  to  find  the  said  titles,  upon  promise  of 
part  of  those  lands  so  found  for  the  King,  or  other  reward,  or  were 
drawm  thereunto  by  threats  .  .  .  .  ,  or  by  heavy  fines,  mulcts,  or  cen- 
sures of  pillory,  stigmatizings,  and  other  like  cruel  and  unusual  pun- 
ishments." * 

In  the  Remonstrance  addressed  to  the  King  in  person,  the  same 
grievances  are  stated  more  at  length. 

"4.  Neither  can  we  in  any  way  admit  the  power  and  jurisdiction 
that  the  new  Parliament  of  England  doth  assume  over  the  parlia- 
ment and  the  whole  kingdom  of  Ireland,  .  .  .  against  whose  power 
and  arrogancy  we  absolutely  protest,  as  having  no  dependency  on 
them,  or  any  other,  but  only  of  your  Majesty;  and  we  are  confident 

*  "  Contemporary  Hist,  of  Affairs  in  Ireland,"  vol.  i,,  part  ii.,  pp.  450-51. 


Parson's  odious  Tyranny  Denounced.  271 

we  should  receive  (were  we  subordinate  to  them)  the  lil^e,  if  not  far 
worse  measure  of  cruelty  and  tyranny,  than  they  now  practice  and 
exercise  against  the  native  Catholics  of  their  own  realm. 

"7.  There  was  a  petition  framed  by  the  Puritans  of  this  Kingdom 
of  Ireland,  subscribed  by  the  hands  of  many  hundreds  of  them,  and 
preferred  to  the  House  of  Commons  of  the  now  Parliament  in  Eng- 
land, for  suppressing  our  religion,  and  us  the  professors  thereof, 
residing  within  this  Kingdom  of  Ireland,  which  as  we  are  credibly 
informed,  was  condescended  unto  by  both  Houses  of  Parliament 
there,  and  undertaken  to  be  accomplished  to  their  full  desires. 

"14.  We  your  Highness's  subjects,  the  distressed  Catholics  of  Ire- 
land, cannot,  but  with  much  grief,  express  our  sense  of  our  general 
sufferings  and  pressures  within  this  realm,  since  the  beginning  of 
your  Majesty's  late  Eoyal  father's  reign,  being  almost  forty  years, 
and  the  only  time  of  continued  peace  we  enjoyed  these  later  ages;  in 
all  which  time,  through  the  corruption  of  the  Governors  and  State  of 
this  realm,  though,  for  redress  of  our  grievances,  often  suit  hath  been 
made  by  us;  yet,  therein,  could  we  never  obtain  any  part  of  our 
desires,  but  rather  have  endured  a  continual  servitude,  than  the  free- 
dom of  subjects,  being  not  permitted,  in  all  this  space,  to  enjoy  our 
birthright,  or  the  benefit  of  the  fundamental  laws  of  this  realm,  they 
being  the  very  same  that  are  in  England,  nor  admitted  to  have  prop- 
erty in  our  goods  or  lands;  for  that  a  tyrannical  government  hath 
been  continually  exercised  over  us  all  this  time,  in  more  strict  and 
cruel  manner,  than  in  Turkey,  or  any  other  infidel  country;  though, 
by  the  ancient  fundamental  laws  of  the  realm,  no  subjects  in  Europe 
can  challenge  more  freedom  or  liberty." 

The  Eemonstrance,  after  enumerating  other  grievances,  substan- 
tially the  same  as  those  mentioned  above,  dwells  with  particular  stress 
on  the  outrageous  acts  of  the  Lords  .Justices,  Parsons  and  Borlase. 
A  remonstra-nce  sent  by  the  aggrieved  Catholics  to  be  laid  before  Par- 
liament, was  not  only  not  presented,  but  the  Parliament  itself  was 
illegally  prorogued  lest  it  should  take  cognizance  thereof,  and  the  re- 
monstrants were  declared  by  proclamation  to  be  traitors  and  rebels. 


272  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

The  evil  practices  of  Sir  William  Parsons  are  specially  denounced;  his 
packing  Juries  and  obtainhig  verdicts  for  the  crown,  under  promise  to 
the  jurors  of  dividing  with  them  the  confiscated  estates  of  Catholics. 
A  petition  was  before  Parliament  against  Parsons  for  a  similar  case  in 
the  O'Byrnes' country,  in  Wicklow;  but  he  prorogued  the  Parliament 
in  violation  of  the  King's  express  command. 

He  "hath  been  a  mean  to  supplant  out  of  their  ancient  possessions 
and  inheritances  many  of  the  inhabitants  of  this  realm,  though  of 
your  best  subjects;  ...  he  having  the  survey  and  measuring  thereof, 
did  most  partially  and  corruptly  survey  the  same,  making  the  best 
land  'waste  and  unprofitable'  in  his  survey,  .  .  .  the  same  wholly  dis- 
posed of  by  the  said  Parsons  at  his  pleasure  .  .  .  ;  and  did  plot  in  the 
Earl  of  Straffoi'd's  government  to  supplant  all  the  old  Irish  in  all  the 
places  of  this  Kingdom.  ..." 

"29 The  Governors  and  State  of  this  Kingdom  procured 

their  own  followers  and  dependants,  who  had  no  estate  nor  settled 
residence  within  this  land,  to  be  unduly  elected  and  returned  to  Par- 
liament here,  as  lawful  members,  and  thereby  exceeding  in  votes  the 
lawful  members  thereof,  have  caused  divers  pernicious  and  bloody 
statutes  and  laws  to  be  enacted  in  this  Kingdom,  and  others  of  no 
less  danger  and  malice  to  be  transmitted  into  England  to  pass  here 
for  laws,  with  intention  to  woi'k  the  final  destruction  of  our 
nation." 

The  remonstrants  address  the  King  in  terms  of  respect  and  ob- 
sequiousness, which  to  us  at  this  distance  of  time  and  with  our 
knowledge  of  Charles'  base  conduct  toward  Ireland  and  Irish  Cath- 
olics,— savor  strongly  of  servility.  But  though  they  should,  crushed 
and  gi-ound  into  the  dust  as  they  had  been  for  generations,  fawn  and 
crouch  at  the  foot  of  the  throne,  the  wrongs  which  they  complained 
of  there  were  not  the  less  real,  not  the  less  incredible. 

They  speak  of  the  forty  years  of  the  Stuart  rule  over  them  as 
"the  only  continued  time  of  peace  we  enjoyed  these  later  ages";  but, 
nevertheless,  truth  compels  them  to  affirm  that  "therein"  they 
"rather  have  endured  a  continual  servitude  than  the  freedom  of  sub- 


Catholics  '"'' Squeezed  "  by  the  Act  of  TJniformity.  273 

jects,  being  not  permitted  in  all  this  space,  to  enjoy  our  birthright,  or 
the  benefit  of  the  fundamental  laws  of  this  realm." 

In  one  word,  all  through  the  reigns  of  James  I.  and  his  son,  the 
Irish  Catholics  were  dealt  with  by  the  local  government  and  its 
abominable  subordinates,  as  if  they  were  the  merest  slaves  and  out- 
Ums,  deprived,  in  their  native  land,  of  all  the  rights  of  citizenship, 
and  all  the  protection  due  to  human  beings. 

The  "comparative  quiet"  which  the  Catholics  enjoyed  during  the 
"forty  years  of  peace"  spoken  of  by  Lord  Clarendon,  is  to  be  ap- 
preciated by  impartial  readers  by  referring  to  what  really  both  James 
and  Charles  did  for  the  relief  of  their  oppressed  and  persecuted  sub- 
jects. It  was  the  boast  of  the  Koyalist  writers  that  the  reign  of  the 
two  first  Stuarts  was  a  kind  of  golden  age  for  the  Irish  Catholics. 

The  Acts  of  Uniformity  and  Supremacy  were  the  twofold  lever 
used  by  the  administration  to  force  Catholics  into  the  Protestant 
Church,  or  to  squeeze  out  of  them  whatever  money  could  be  got  for  the 
King's  need  or  to  satisfy  the  covetousness  of  the  officials,  high  and  low. 

Who  can  forget  the  rigor  with  which  the  Act  of  Uniformity  was 
enforced  by  James  at  the  very  opening  of  his  reign  ? 

A  glance  at  its  operation  will  satisfy  us  as  to  its  terrible  power  to 
oppress  the  conscience. 

Fines  on  Eecusants. 
Every  poor  man  who  refused  to  attend  Protestant  service  on  Sun- 
day, was  fined  t^velvejMnce,  that  is,  one-third  of  his  weekly  earnings. 
And  the  fine  had  to  be  paid,  as  there  were  too  many  greedy  and 
lynx-eyed  officials  who  were  interested  in  collecting  it.  Lord  Straf- 
ford, while  governing  Ireland,  denounces  the  practice  as  both 
ineffective  for  its  purpose,  and  tyrannical  toward  the  people.  "This 
course  alone  will  never  bring  them  to  church,  being  rather  an  engine 
to  drain  money  out  of  their  pockets,  than  to  raise  a  right  belief  and 
faith  in  their  hearts,  and  so  doth  not  indeed  tend  to  that  end  it  sets 
forth."* 


*  Strafford  Papers,  ii.  39. 

18 


374  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

As  "draining  money"  was  the  real  object  of  the  administrators  of 
this  law,  they  applied  it  rigorously  to  the  rich  as  well  as  to  the  poor. 
During  Lord  Chichester's  rule,  nine  Catholics  were  at  one  time  fined 
the  sum  of  £750  for  recusancy.  Yet  Chichester  boasted  that  the 
amount  of  fines  imposed  in  the  whole  county  of  Dublin  for  a  year's 
recusancy  did  not  exceed  £14  or  £15.  Here  is  the  peremptory 
answer  to  this  unblushing  assertion. 

1605.  "The  Lord  Deputy  (Chichester)  and  council  convened 
before  them  the  aldermen  and  some  of  the  principal  citizens,  and 
endeavoured  by  persuasions  and  lenity  to  draw  them  to  their  duty. 
They  also  exemplified  under  the  Great  Seal  and  published  the  statute 
of  uniformity  of  the  2d  of  Elizabeth  in  regard  there  was  found  to  be 
some  material  difference  between  the  original  record  and  the  printed 
copies,  that  none  might  pretend  ignorance  of  the  original  record,  and 
added  thereto  the  King's  injunction  for  the  observance  of  the  said 
statute.  But  these  gentle  methods  failing  to  have  any  effect,  sixteen 
of  the  most  eminent  of  the  city  were  convened  into  the  Court  of  Cas- 
tle Chamber,  of  whom  nine  of  the  chief  were  censured,  and  six  of  the 
aldermen  fined  each  £100,  and  the  other  three  £50  apiece,  and  they 
were  all  committed  prisoners  to  the  Castle  during  the  pleasure  of  the 
court;  and  it  was  ordered  that  none  of  the  citizens  should  bear  office 
till  they  conformed.  The  week  following  the  rest  were  censured  in 
the  same  manner,  except  Alderman  Archer,  who  conformed."* 

How  much  "  the  rest "  had  to  pay  is  not  told  us.  This  was  in  the 
city:  how  many  more  were  heavily  "censured"  throughout  the 
county,  may  be  guessed  at  easily.  Rev.  Mr.  Rooth,  a  Catholic  priest 
and  a  contemporary,  affirms  that  in  the  single  county  of  Cavan,  the 
fines  inflicted  on  recusants  amounted  yearly  to  £8,000. 

These  fines,  levied  mercilessly  all  over  Ireland,  were  one  of  the 
chief  resources  of  the  government.  The  Reverend  Fernando  Warner 
tells  us,  with  a  grim  irony,  that:  "The  Papists  had  for  many  years 
■enjoyed  a  great  calm,   being  upon  the  matter  absolved   from   the 

*  Harris,  "  Hist,  and  Antiquities  of  the  City  of  Dublin,"  p.  322. 


Pitiless  Engines  of  Ojjpression,  275 

sevel'est  parts  of  the  law,  and  dispensed  with  for  the  gentlest;  and 
were  gro^vn  only  a  part  of  the  revenue,  without  any  prohaljle  danget 
of  being  made  a  sacrifice  to  the  law." 

The  vexations  and  oppression  exercised  toward  recnsants  all 
through  these  years,  were  such,  that  Strafford  himself  protested 
against  them  as  impolitic, — at  least,  as  adding  an  intolerable 
grievance  to  the  confiscations  by  which  he  and  his  royal  master 
were  preparing  to  dispossess  every  Catholic  and  Irishman  in  the 
country. 

"It  were  too  much  at  once  to  distemper  them  by  bringing 
plantations  upon  them,  and  disturbing  them  in  the  exercise  of 
their  religion,  so  long  as  it  be  without  scandal;  and  so  indeed  very 
inconsiderate,  as  I  conceive,  to  move  in  this  latter,  till  that  former  be 
settled,  and  by  that  means  the  Protestant  party  become  by  much  the 
stronger,  which,  in  truth,  as  yet  I  do  not  conceive  it  to  be."  And, 
again,  speaking  of  the  impolicy  of  doing  violence  to  the  Catholic  con- 
science by  enforcing  the  Act  of  Uniformity:  "This  course  alone  will 
never  bring  them  to  church,  being  rather  an  engine  to  drain  money 
out  of  their  pockets,  than  to  raise  a  right  belief  and  faith  in  their 
hearts,  and  so  doth  not  indeed  tend  to  that  end  it  sets  forth."* 

The  Ecclesiastical  Courts,  set  in  motion  everyAvhere,  under  the 
pretence  of  exacting  uniformity  in  religion,  Avere  only  machines  of 
pitiless  peculation.  Bishop  Burnet  bears  unimpeachable  testimony 
to  this  fact: 

"The  officers  of  the  court  made  it  their  business  to  draw  people 
into  trouble  by  vexatious  suits,  and  to  hold  them  so  long  in  it  that  for 
threepence  worth  of  the  tithe  of  turf,  they  would  put  to  five 
pounds  charge.  And  the  solemnest  and  sacredest  of  all  the  church 
censures,  which  was  excommunication,  went  about  in  so  sordid  and 
base  a  manner,  that  all  regard  to  it,  as  it  was  a  spiritual  censure,  was 
lost;  and  the  effects  it  had  in  law  made  it  be  cried  out  on  as  a  most 
intolerable  piece  of  tyranny.     The  officers  of  the  court  thought  they 

*  "  State  Letters  of  the  Earl  of  Strafford,"  ii.  39,     Dublin,  1740. 


276  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

had  a  sort  of  right  to  oppress  the  natives,  and  that  all  was  well  got, 
that  was  wrung  from  them."* 

This  single  concluding  sentence  is  more  eloquent,  and  gives  a 
more  vivid  description  of  the  grinding  oppression  inflicted  on  the 
Irish  people  by  the  Established  Church  alone,  independently  of  the 
good  work  performed  by  the  Chichesters,  Borlases,  and  Parsonses, — 
that  it  says  more  even  than  the  Kemonstrances  published  during  or 
before  the  insurrection  of  1641. 

No  less  odious  and  oppressive  was  the  celebrated  "Court  of 
Wards."  It  had  been  enacted  that  Avhen  any  Catholic  nobleman  or 
landed  proprietor  died  without  conforming  to  the  Established  Church, 
his  heirs  were  handed  over  to  this  Court,  which  placed  its  wards 
under  the  guardianship  of  Protestant  families,  in  order  to  their  being 
brought  up  in  the  State  religion.  Such  guardianship  became  an 
object  of  competition  among  the  royal  favorites  or  the  friends  of  the 
judges.  "The  wardship  and  marriage  of  the  heir" — says  Carte — 
"were  reserved  to  the  Crown.  These  lands  and  wardships  were 
usually  granted  to  favourites,  and  men  of  power  and  interest,  who, 
though  they  gave  security  to  the  Court  of  Wards  to  take  care,  as  well 
of  the  education  and  maintenance  of  the  heir,  as  of  the  good  condition 
of  the  estate,  too  often  neglected  both;  destroyed  the  woods,  and 
committed  horrible  waste  upon  the  lands;  brought  up  the  heir  in 
ignorance,  and  in  a  manner  unwortliy  of  his  quality;  and,  selling  his 
person  to  the  highest  bidder,  matched  him  unequally  in  point  of  birth 
and  fortune,  as  well  as  disagreeably  with  regard  to  the  character, 
qualities,  and  figure  of  the  person  that  was  picked  out  to  be  the  com- 
panion of  his  life."  f 

In  the  work  of  a  contemporary  writer  now  become  classic,  we  are 
informed  of  the  last  criminal  intrigues  of  Lord  Justice  Parsons,  and 
of  the  remonstrances  to  Charles  I.  against  the  tyrannical  and  op- 
pressive rule  of  this  infamous  magistrate.  In  spite  of  his  desperate 
opposition   the   King's   Commissioners  met  the  Chiefs  of   the  Con- 

*  Burnet,  "  Life  of  Bishop  Bedell,"  p.  89.  +  Carte,  ii.  248. 


The  Court  a  great  Proselytizing  Machiiie.  277 

federated  Catholics  at  Trim,  on  March  17,  1G43,  and  duly  received 
and  transmitted  to  the  King  the  remonstrance  drawn  up  by  his 
aggrieved  subjects.     One  of  the  articles  said: 

"The  illegal,  arbitrary,  and  unlawful  proceedings  of  the  said  Wil- 
liam Parsons,  and  one  of  the  said  impeached  judges,  and  their 
adherents  and  instruments  in  the  Court  of  Wards,  and  the  many  wil- 
fully erroneous  decrees  and  judgments  of  that  Court,  by  which  the 
heirs  of  Catholic  noblemen  and  other  Catholics  were  more  cruelly  and 
tyrannically  dealt  Avithal;  destroyed  in  their  estates,  and  bred  in  dis- 
soluteness and  ignorance;  their  parents'  debts  unsatisfied;  their 
younger  brothers  and  sisters  left  wholly  unprovided  for;  the  ancient 
tenure  of  mesne  lands  unregarded;  estates  valid  in  law,  and  made  for 
valuable  considerations,  avoided  against  law;  and  the  whole  land  filled 
up  with  the  frequent  swarms  of  escheators,  feodarics,  pursuivants, 
and  others,  by  authority  of  that  Court."* 

Of  course,  this  Court  of  Wards  was,  originally,  one  of  the 
principal  agencies  devised  to  prevent  the  growth  of  Popery,  and  to 
do  away  with  Avhat  remained  of  the  Old  Irish  great  families  or  the 
ancient  Anglo-Norman  aristocracy.  "  Our  kings,"  says  Bishop 
Burnet,  "  were  according  to  the  first  institution  the  guardians  of  the 
wards.  They  bred  them  up  in  their  courts,  and  disposed  of  them  in 
marriage  as  they  thought  fit.  Afterwards  they  compounded  or  for- 
gave them;  or  gave  them  to  some  branches  of  the  family,  or  to 
provide  the  younger  children.  But  they  proceeded  in  this  very 
gently:  and  the  chief  care,  after  the  Reformation,  was  to  breed  the 
wards  Protestants.  Still  all  were  under  a  great  dependance  by  this 
means.  Much  money  was  not  raised  this  way;  but  families  were 
often  at  mercy,  and  were  used  according  to  their  behaviour.  King 
James  granted  these  generally  to  his  servants  and  favourites;  and 
they  made  the  most  of  them;  so  that  what  M'as  before  a  dependance 
on  the  Crown,  and  was  moderately  compounded  for,  became  then 
a  most  exacting  oppression,  by  which  several  families  were  ruined."  f 

*  See  Rev.  C.  P.  Meehan,  "  Confederation  of  Kilkenny,"  ed.  *1882,  p.  82;  and 
Plowden,  "Historical  View,"  Ac,  I.,  Append.  84. 
t  Burnet,  "  Hist,  of  his  Own  Times,"  i.  16. 


278  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

The  Remonstrance  presented  at  Trim,  and  the  energetic  repre- 
sentations made  to  the  Royal  Commissioners,  were  instrumental  in 
obtaining  the  deprivation  of  Sir  William  Parsons,  but  not  before  he 
and  his  multitude  of  followers  had  been  gorged  Avith  the  spoils  of  the 
Irish  Catholics.  We  dismiss  him  for  the  moment.  But  no  one  who 
has  read  in  authentic  history  of  the  doings  of  this  bad  man,  can 
wonder  that  Catholic  Ireland,  oppressed  and  tortured  bej^ond  the 
limits  of  human  endurance,  should  have  turned  in  her  despair  upon 
the  wrong-doers. 

Apostasy  from  their  baptismal  creed,  from  the  faith  of  their 
fathers  and  people,  from  what  they  believed  in  their  inmost  con- 
science was  the  only  true  religion,  was  forced  upon  the  nation  at 
every  turn,  if  they  would  enjoy  the  simplest  rights  and  privileges  of 
citizenship  or  human  fellowship.  They  could  not  sue  out  livery  of 
their  lands  without  taking  the  Oath  of  Supremacy.  If  they  entered 
on  possession  without  doing  so,  they  were  punished  as  intruders  on 
the  property  of  the  Crown. 

The  Irish'  Catholics,  following  in  this  the  lead  of  the  nobility  and 
gentry  of  the  Pale,  sought  earnestly  and  with  united  action  a  relief 
from  all  these  burthens  and  disabilities.  The  removal  sought  for  is 
known  in  history  by  the  name  of  "  the  Graces."  But  we  now  know 
what  became  of  these. 

Ireland  from  16^0  to  1653. 

To  any  man  who  has  read  the  history  of  tlie  confiscations  and 
plantations  which  filled  up,  in  Ireland,  the  reigns  of  the  two  first 
Stuart  Kings,  it  will  not  seem  strange  or  unexpected  that  the  entire 
Celtic  population,  as  well  as  the  Anglo-Irish  Catholics,  should  rise 
against  their  persecutors  and  oppressors  whenever  a  favorable  oppor- 
tunity offered  them  any  prospect  of  throwing  off  a  crushing  yoke  and 
recovering  some  portion  of  civil  and  religious  freedom.. 

Without  recurring  to  the  intolerable  ills  endured  under  Elizabeth, 
we  may  fairly  say  that  the  administration  of  the  Irish  Government 
under  her  two  successors  from  1G04  to  1G40  was  simply  organized 


Twin  Flame  wMcli  fed  Irish  Patriotism  and  Endurance.      279 

plunder,  legalized  iniquity,  a  tyranny  so  blindly  oppressive  and  fero- 
cious, that  we  wonder  how  men  in  their  senses  could  have  imagined 
for  a  moment  that  this  wholesale  system  of  wrong-doing  and  savage 
cruelty  could  produce  in  tlie  oppressed  any  other  feelings  than  those 
of  unquenchable  hatred  and  an  insatiable  desire  of  revenge. 

But  in  the  bosoms  of  the  immense  majority  of  the  Irish  nation 
there  burned  a  nobler  fire  than  that  of  hatred  toward  the  oppressor, 
— the  ardor  begotten  of  religious  Faith  deeply  rooted  in  every  recess 
of  the  soul,  and  grown  all  the  more  vigorous  and  imperishable,  that 
its  professors,  from  generation  to  generation,  had  sacrificed  and  suf- 
fered everything  rather  than  pluck  it  out  of  their  hearts.  And  there 
burned  together  with  the  pure,  bright  fire  of  religious  faith  the 
scarcely  less  pure  and  no  less  ardent  flame  of  patriotism, — the  love  of 
native  country  foully  wronged,  and  the  pride  of  an  ancient  and  war- 
like race  whom  it  was  England's  avowed  aim  to  exterminate. 

The  united  perfidy,  greed,  and  oppression  which  characterized  the 
conduct  of  the  First  Charles  toward  the  Catholics  of  Ireland,  coupled 
with  the  abominable  falsehood,  fraud,  and  tyranny  of  Wentworth,  his 
tool,  had  disposed  such  of  the  Irish  as  were  not  given  up  to  despair, 
to  rise  up  in  rebellion.  And  the  rapid  progress  of  the  Covenanters 
and  Puritans  in  the  three  Kingdoms,  the  open  professions  made 
inside  and  outside  of  the  English  Parliament  to  destroy  utterly 
Popery  and  Papists,  left  no  choice  to  Irish  manhood  between  abjectly 
submitting  to  be  exterminated,  after  having  been  outlawed  and 
despoiled,  or  vindicating  by  armed  resistance  their  right  to  live  as 
freemen  on  the  land  of  their  birth. 

The  uprising  of  the  Irish  nation,  like  one  man,  in  1641-1642, 
would,  to  the  eyes  of  any  unprejudiced  and  enlightened  reader  of 
contemporary  history,  be  the  natural  and  inevitable  result  of  the 
threats  and  acts  of  the  triumphant  Covenanter  and  Puritan  Party  on 
both  sides  of  the  Irish  Channel,  coming  so  closely  after  the  adminis- 
tration of  Wentworth. 

They  did  rebel,  without  concert,  unhappily,  in  one  corner  of  the 
island,  and,  even  there,  without  general  premeditation  or  preparation. 


280  ^''^^  Cause  of  Ireland. 

It  was  the  breaking  forth  of  the  fierce  flame  from  the  fires  so  long 
smoukleriug  beneath  the  surface,  and  fed  by  so  many  years  of  the 
cruelest  heartburnings.  Men  were,  or  pretended  to  be,  astonished 
that  the  fierce  conflagration  spread  so  rapidly.  They  might  have 
thought  that  Celtic  Ireland  was  conquered,  crushed,  and  that  its 
spirit  was  quenched  in  a  deluge  of  blood.  But  the  spirit  was  there: 
and  Oh!  that  there  had  been  found  men  to  direct  and  control  the 
forces  of  a  movement  as  legitimate,  as  holy  as  ever  won  the  admira- 
tion of  past  ages ! 

The  rebellion  of  1641  has  been  qualified  as  "execrable  "  by  those 
who  provoked  it,  and  by  those  who  profited  by  the  "  Protestant  As- 
cendancy," which  grew  up,  like  the  Upas  Tree,  amid  the  waste  left 
behind  by  those  who  exterminated  the  "rebels." 

Let  us  turn  the  tables  on  these  men,  and  prove  beyond  the  possi- 
bility of  denial  or  even  of  doubt,  that  this  "rebellion  "  was  provoked, 
fostered,  and  extended  by  the  Pailiamentary  party  in  England  and  by 
their  zealous  co-operators  in  Ireland,  the  local  Grovernment  having  its 
seat  in  Dublin  Castle,  and  the  army  of  officials,  adventurers.  Planters, 
&c.,  who  were  interested  in  advancing  the  work  of  confiscation  and 
extermination. 

There  did  exist,  before  the  23d  October,  1641,  an  Execrable 
Plot  for  inciting  to  rebellion  all  the  Catholics  in  Ireland,  and  for 
utterly  extirpating  them. 

Leland,  naturally  biassed  as  he  must  have  been  in  favor  of  this 
Protestant  Ascendancy  and  of  those  who  had  laid  its  foundations, 
reared,  and  secured  its  duration,— still  acknowledges,  that  the  aim 
of  England  and  of  those  who  ruled  Ireland  in  her  name  was  to  root 
out  everything  bearing  the  name  of  Catholic. 

"The  favorite  object,"  he  writes,  "of  the  Irish  Governors  and 
the  English  Parliament  was  the  utter  extermination  of  all  the  Cath- 
olic inhabitants  of  Ireland.  Their  estates  were  already  marked  out 
and  allotted  to  their  conquerors;  so  that  they  and  their  posterity  were 
consigned  to  inevitable  ruin. 


}}  * 


*  Leland,  "  History  of  Ireland,"  iii.,  p.  192. 


Parsons  and  Borlase  pack  a  Parliament  to  foment  PebelUon.      281 

This  is  a  sweeping  indictment  of  the  entire  policy  of  English  rule 
in  Ireland,  a  terrible  censure  of  the  Protestantism,  which  professed 
to  have  in  view  the  "civilizing"  of  the  Irish  race  and  supplanting  of 
Komish  superstition  by  the  pure  morality  of  the  Gospel.  And  this  is 
the  testimony  of  a  clergyman  of  the  Established  Church,  an  official, 
moreover,  of  the  Dublin  government, 

Warner,  Clarendon,  and  Carte  bear  no  less  convincing  testimony 
to  the  existence  of  this  design  of  extermination.  The  last-named,  in 
particular,  attests  the  existence  of  the  plot  long  before  the  breaking 
out  of  the  rebellion: 

"The  reason  of  their  (the  Justices  Parsons  and  Borlase)  advice 
is  founded  upon  their  darling  scheme  of  an  extirpation  of  the  old 
English  proprietors,  and  a  general  plantation  of  the  whole  Kingdom 
with  a  new  colony;  for  this  is  the  meaning  of  what  they  allege,  to 
show  it  to  be  '  unsafe  for  his  Majesty,  and  destructive  to  the  King- 
dom, to  grant  the  petitioners'  request;  as  being  altogether  in- 
consistent with  the  means  of  raising  a  considerable  revenue  for  his 
crown,  of  settling  Eeligion  and  Civility  in  the  Kingdom;  and  of 
establishing  a  firm  and  lasting  peace,  to  the  honor  of  his  Majesty,  the 
safety  of  his  royal  posterity,  and  the  comfort  of  all  his  faithful 
subjects.'"* 

Elsewhere  Carte  affords  us  still  more  complete  evidence.  "These 
difficulties  and  considerations  were  of  little  weight  with  the  Lords 
Justices;  who,  having  got  a  thin  House  of  Commons  to  their  mind, 
of  persons  devoted  to  their  interests  and  measures,  resolved  to  im- 
prove the  opportunity  offered,  and  to  get  such  acts  passed  as  might 
distress  the  King,  exasperate  the  bulk  of  the  nation,  spread  the 
rebellion,  and  so  promote  their  darling  scheme  of  extinguishing  the 
old  proprietors  and  making  a  new  plantation  of  the  Kingdom,  "f 

And  elsewhere: 

"Such  considerations  as  these  were  not  agreeable  to  the  views  of 
the  Lords  Justices,  wiio  had  set  their  hearts  on  the  extirpation  not 

*  Carte,  i.  391.  t  Carte  MSS.,  vol.  v.,  p.  272. 


283  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

only  of  the  '  mere  Irish/  but  likewise  of  all  the  old  English  families 
that  were  Eoman  Catholics,  and  the  making  of  a  new  plantation  all 
over  the  Kingdom,  in  which  they  could  not  fail  to  have  a  principal 
share;  so  all  their  reasonings,  upon  all  occasions,  Avere  calculated  and 
intended  to  promote  that  their  favorite  scheme." 

It  was  the  deliberate  and  well-matured  design,  therefore,  of  the 
men  who,  unhappily  for  the  Irish  people,  had  the  principal  share  in 
the  government  of  the  Kingdom,  to  provoke  and  promote  rebellion. 

The  "rebellion"  began  Oct,  23,  1641.  From  the  foregoing  we 
are  prepared  to  accept  as  the  simple  truth  the  statement  of  the  Irish 
General,  Owen  Eoe  O'Neill: 

"We  imagine  we  are  not  in  rebellion  ourselves,  but  do  really  fight 
for  our  Prince  in  defence  of  his  royal  crown  and  prerogative,  wherein 
we  shall  continue  and  die  to  the  last  man." 

"  The  native  Irish  being  well  informed,  as  they  thought,  that  they 
must  either  turn  Protestants,  or  depart  tlie  Kingdom,  or  be  hanged 
at  their  own  doors,  took  up  arms  in  their  own  defence,  especially  in 
Ulster,  where  the  six  counties  had  been  forfeited. "  * 

And  the  author  of  the  "  Aphorismical  Discovery  of  Faction,"  says 
on  his  part:  "It  was  blazed  abroad  by  the  best  note  of  Protestants 
that  all  Ireland  by  that  time  twelvemonth  must  either  go  to  '  church,' 
be  executed,  or  endure  banishment  or  exile."  f 

Echoing  the  report  gone  abroad  through  Ireland  of  the  purpose 
to  exterminate  all  mere  Irish  and  Catholics,  Lord  Castlehaven  says: 
"The  Catholics  were  urged  (i.  e.,  pushed)  to  rebellion;  and  the  Lords 
Justices  were  often  heard  to  say,  that  the  more  there  were  in  re- 
bellion the  more  lands  would  be  forfeited."  X 

Let  the  men  who  provoked  and  drove  the  nation  to  rise,  without 
previous  concert,  or  preparation,  or  necessary  provision,  against  the 
ferocious  greed  which  coveted  the  land  and  thirsted  for  the  blood  of 
its  children,  call  the  movement  a  rebellion,  an  execrable  rebellion, — 

*  Anderson's  "Royal  Genealogies,"  in  Curry,  vol.  ii.,  p.  371. 

+  Aphor.  Dis.,  i.  12. 

X  "  Keview  of  Civil  Wars  of  Ireland,"  p.  28. 


Was  the  Insurrection  stdlied  by   Wholesale  Massacred       283 

we  who  view  this  terrible  drama  and  its  actors  at  the  distance  of  two 
centuries  and  a  half,  will  pronounce  it  to  be,  on  the  part  of  the  in- 
surgents, one  of  the  noblest  revolutions  ever  attempted  to  be  carried 
out  in  favor  of  civil  and  religious  liberty  by  a  people  the  most  cruelly 
wronged  of  all  those  whom  liistory  mentions. 

It  was  a  noble  attempt  to  resist  the  threats  of  the  Puritan  Cove- 
nanters and  the  blood-thirsty  plunderers  directed  by  Parsons  and 
Borlase. 

Was  this  insurrection,  justified  as  it  was  by  every  principle  and 
motive  which  render  armed  resistance  to  the  oppressor  and  ex- 
terminator not  only  justifiable  but  a  matter  of  duty, — was  it,  then, 
sullied  in  its  beginning  and  throughout  its  course  by  the  wholesale 
massacres,  first  mentioned  by  Sir  John  Temple  in  his  "History  of  the 
Irish  Rebellion,"  published  in  1G46? 

The  Truth  about  the  3Iassacres  of  16Jfl. 

The  incredible  numbers  asserted  to  have  been  massacred  within 
two  years  after  Oct.  23,  1641. 

Sir  John  »Temple  affirms,  that:  "Tliere  being,  since  the  rebellion 
first  broke  out,  unto  the  time  of  the  cessation  made  Sept.  15,  16-13, 
....  above  300,000  British  and  Protestants  cruelly  murdered  in  cold 
blood,  destroyed  some  other  wa}^,  or  expelled  out  of  their  habitations, 
according  to  the  strictest  conjecture  and  computation  of  those  who 
seemed  best  to  understand  the  numbers  of  English  planted  in  Ireland, 
besides  those  few  which  fell  in  the  heat  of  fight  during  tlie  war."  * 

Eapin  says:  "Above  154,000  Protestants  were  massacred  in  that 
Kingdom,  from  the  23d  October  (1641)  to  the  1st  March  following."! 

Hume  does  not  hesitate  to  write :  "By  some  computations,  those 
who  perished  by  all  these  cruelties  are  supposed  to  be  150,000  or 
200,000.  By  the  most  moderate,  and  probably  the  most  reasonable 
account,  they  are  made  to  amount  to  40,000,  if  this  extenuation 
itself  be  not,  as  is  usual  in  such  cases,  somewhat  exaggerated."  X 

*  Temple,  "  The  Irish  Rebellion,"  p.  43. 

+  "  Hist,  of  England,"  ix.,  340.  J  "  Hist,  of  England." 


284  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Clarendon  tells  us  tliat:  "A  general  insurrection  of  the  Irish 
spread  over  the  whole  country,  in  such  an  inhuman  and  barbarous 
manner,  that  there  were  40,000  or  50,000  of  the  English  Protestants 
murdered  before  they  suspected  themselves  to  be  in  any  danger,  or 
could  provide  for  their  defence,  by  drawing  together  into  towns  or 
strong  houses."  * 

REFUTATION. 

To  confine  ourselves  to  the  North  of  Ireland  where  the  in- 
surrection began,  and  particularly  to  its  seat,  the  province  of  Ulster, 
we  have  only  to  arrive  at  as  near  an  estimate  as  we  can  of  the  num- 
bers of  its  Protestant  population  in  1641. 

In  the  report  of  a  survey  made  in  1619  (already  mentioned  on 
page  231)  by  a  Eoyal  Commission,  it  is  stated  that  in  all  the  Plan- 
tation of  Ulster,  comprising  the  six  forfeited  counties,  there  were  in 
all  1,974  families,  giving  6,215  men  between  fifteen  and  sixty  able  to 
bear  arms.f  In  1633,  we  have  it  from  the  State  Papers  of  the  Earl 
of  Strafford,  that  the  number  of  men  on  the  Plantation  able  to  bear 
arms  was  13,092,  which  would  indicate  as  a  proportional  number  of 
families  between  4,000  or  5,000. 

Sir  William  Petty,  at  the  end  of  this  dreadful  war,  gave  to  the 
world  the  only  statistical  information  ever  published  about  the  rel- 
ative numbers  of  Catholics  and  Protestants  in  the  Kingdom  both 
when  the  insurrection  began,  and  when  extermination  had  run  its 
bloody  course.  He  gives  1,466,000  souls  as  the  total  for  all  Ireland 
in  1641.  In  that  total  the  Protestants  were  to  the  Catholics  as  two 
to  eleven,  which  would  give  225,000  Protestants  for  all  Ireland,  as 
against  1,241,000  Catholics. 

Now  Carte  states,  that  the  numbers  said  to  have  been  massacred 
"were  more  than  there  were  of  English  at  that  time  in  all  Ireland." 
And  again:  "It  is  certain,  that  the  great  body  of  the  English  was 
settled  in  Munster  and  Leinster,  where  very  few  murders  were  com- 


*  "  Hist,  of  the  Irish  Rebellion."- 

+  Gilbert,  "  Contemporary  Hist,  of  Affairs  in  Ireland,"  vol.  i.  App. 


A  Cartiival  of  Falsehood.  285 

mitted;  and  that  in  Ulster,  which  was  the  dismal  scene  of  the  mas- 
sacre, there  were  above  100,000  Scots,  who  before  the  general  plan- 
tation of  it,  had  settled  in  great  numbers  in  the  counties  of  Down 
and  Antrim;  and  new  shoals  of  them  had  come  over,  upon  the  plan- 
tation of  the  six  escheated  counties:  and  they  were  so  very  powerful 
therein  that  the  Irish,  either  out  of  fear  of  their  numbers,  or  some 
other  politic  reason,  spared  those  of  that  nation,  making  proc- 
lamation, on  pain  of  death,  that  no  Scotsman  should  be  molested  in 
body,  goods,  or  lands It  cannot  therefore  reasonably  be  pre- 
sumed that  there  were  at  most  above  20,000  English  souls,  of  all  ages 
and  sexes,  in  Ulster  at  that  time.  And  of  these,  as  appears  by  the 
Lord  Justices'  letter,  there  were  several  thousands  got  safe  to  Dublin, 
and  were  subsisted  there  for  many  months  afterwards;  besides  6,000 
women  and  children  which  Captain  ]\Iervyn  saved  in  Fermanagh,  and 
others  that  got  safe  to  Derry,  Colerain,  and  Carrickfergus,  and  went 
from  these  and  other  ports  into  England." 

Taking  the  official  figures  given  in  the  Official  Survey  of  1619,  in 
which  every  family  in  the  Plantation  was  visited,  as  we  have  seen  in  the 
case  of  the  Blennerhassetts;  and  taking  into  account  the  "new  shoals 
of  Scots  that  liad  come  over,  upon  the  plantation  of  the  six  escheated 
counties;"  20,000  English  souls  may  seem  a  very  high  estimate  of 
the  non-Irish  and  non-Scotch  settlers  in  Ulster  in  1641.  Had  all 
these  been  swept  out  of  existence  in  the  beginning  of  the  war,  a  thing 
which  no  one  has  dared  to  affirm, — the  number  of  the  pretended  vic- 
tims of  the  "massacre"  would  have  fallen  far  short  of  that  mentioned 
by  that  Prince  of  Liars,  Burton.  Let  us, — since  we  are  Just  review- 
ing that  Carnival  of  Falsehood,  Fraud,  and  Forgery,  the  historical 
conspiracy  to  stain  with  blood  the  rising  of  the  Irish  in  1641,  let  us 
examine  the  assertions  of  this  Burton. 

"It  would  be  almost  endless  to  give  an  account  of  all  the  cruelties 
acted  by  these  incarnate  devils  upon  the  innocent  English,  of  whom 
they  destroyed  near  300,000  in  a  few  months."  * 

*  Burton,  "  Hist,  of  the  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  Westminster,  1811,  p.  37. 


286  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Where  on  earth  did  they  find  such  a  number  to  destroj^  ?  But 
even  this  monstrous  feat  of  mendacity  is,  in  a  manner,  eclipsed  by  Sir 
Phihp  Warwick's  achievement:  "In  one  week,"  he  says,  "they  (the 
Irish)  massacred  very  near  100,000  persons,  men,  women,  and 
children."* 

Eapin,  after  these  master-liars,  attempts  to  cap  the  climax  by 
telling  us,  that:  "On  the  23d  of  October  and  the  following  days, 
above  40,000  English  Protestants  were  massacred  by  the  Irish."  \ 

Borlase  is  not  behindhand  with  his  compeers:  "The  greatest  and 
most  horrid  massacres  were  acted  before  the  Parliament  could  possi- 
bly know  there  was  a  rebellion;  for  after  that  the  plot  was  detected, 
the  rebels  somewhat  slacked  in  their  first  cruelties."  % 

Leaving  altogether  aside  Catholic  writers  on  this  subject,  we  need 
only  call  the  most  accredited  Protestant  historians  to  contradict  flatly, 
and  refute  triumphantly  these  conspirators,  and  to  upset  the  edifice 
of  calumnious  falsehood  they  have  reared. 

Warner,  himself  a  clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England,  who 
spared  no  labor  to  examine  all  the  original  sources  of  the  history  of 
the  Cromwellian  epoch,  avers  that:  "It  is  easy  enough  to  demonstrate 
the  falsehood  of  the  relation  of  every  Protestant  historian  of  this 
rebellion.  ...  To  any  one  who  considers  how  thinly  Ireland  was  at 
that  time  peopled  by  Protestants,  and  the  province  of  Ulster  particu- 
larly, where  was  the  chief  scene  of  the  massacre,  those  relations  upon 
the  face  of  them  appear  incredible.  Setting  aside  all  opinions  and 
calculations  in  this  affair,  which,  besides  their  uncertainty,  are  with- 
out any  precision  as  to  the  space  of  time  in  which  the  murders  were 
committed,  the  evidence  from  the  depositions  in  the  manuscript 
above  mentioned,  stands  thus: — The  number  of  people  killed,  upon 
positive  evidence  collected  in  two  years  after  the  insurrection  broke 
out,  adding  them  all  together,  amounts  only  to  2,109;  on  the  reports 
of  other  Protestants,  1,619  more;  and  on  the  report  of  some  of  the 

*  "  Memoirs  of  the  Reif^n  of  Charles  I."  (London,  1703\  p.  199. 

+  "  Hist,  of  Enf!:land,"  vol.  ix.,  p.  3-10. 

%  "  History  of  the  Execrable  Irish  Rebellion  "  (Folio,  London,  1680),  p.  50. 


A  Decisive  Documeiitary  Proof.  287 

rebels  themselves,  a  further  number  of  300:  the  whole  making  4,028. 
Besides  these  murders,  there  is,  in  the  same  collection,  evidence  on 
the  report  of  others,  of  8,000  killed  by  ill  usage:  and  if  we  should 
allow  that  the  cruelties  of  the  Irish  out  of  war  extended  to  these 
numbers,  which,  considering  the  nature  of  several  of  the  depositions, 
I  think  in  my  conscience  we  can]iot,  yet  to  be  impartial  we  mast 
allow,  that  there  is  no  pretence  for  laying  a  greater  number  to  their 
charge.  This  account  is  also  corroborated  by  a  letter  which  I  copied 
out  of  the  Council  Books  at  Dublin,  written  on  May  5,  1653,  ten 
years  after  the  beginning  of  the  rebellion,  from  the  Parliament  Com- 
missioners in  Ireland  to  the  English  Parliament,  After  exciting 
them  to  further  severity  against  the  Irish,  as  being  afraid  *  their 
behavior  towards  this  people  may  never  sufficiently  avenge  their  mur- 
ders and  massacres,  and  lest  the  Parliament  might  shortly  be  in 
pursuance  of  a  speedy  settlement  of  this  nation,  and  thereby  some 
tender  concessions  might  be  concluded,'  the  Commissioner^  tell  them 
that  it  appears  'besides  840  families,  there  were  hilled,  hanged, 
burned,  and  drowned,  6,062.'"* 

This  is  the  total  of  the  victims  of  Irish  barbarity  sent  to  England 
by  the  Commissioners  of  Parliament,  in  a  document  in  which  they 
appealed  to  the  English  Commons  and  Lords  for  additional  measures 
of  rigor  toward  the  Irish  insurgents.  Surely  they  were  not  likely  to 
give  too  low  a  figure. 

"The  proper  evidence  (says  Mr.  Prendergast,  himself  a  Protes- 
tant) to  prove  or  disprove  this  dreadful  massacre,  are  of  course 
authentic  contemporaneous  documents, — not  compilations  of  a  later 
age,  like  Hume's  'History  of  England,'  or  even  the  ponderous  pam- 
phlets of  party  writers  of  the  day,  like  Milton  and  Clarendon,  stran- 
gers to  Ireland  and  its  transactions. 

"There  is  one  document  that  ought  to  be  decisive  in  this  case, 
and  it  would  have  been  so  if  the  English  of  Ireland  were  not  inter- 
ested enough,  and  the  English  of  England  prejudiced  enough,  to 

♦Warner,  "  Hist,  of  the  Civil  War  in  Ireland,"  pp.  296,  297. 


288  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

propagate  and  perpetuate  any  calumny  to  the  damage  of  the  fame 
and  national  character  of  the  people  of  Ireland.  It  is  the  following: 
— Just  two  months  after  the  outbreak  the  Government  issued  a  Com- 
mission under  the  Great  Seal  to  seven  despoiled  Protestant  Ministers, 
to  take  evidence  upon  oath  '  to  keep  up  the  memory  of  the  outrages 
committed  by  the  Irish  to  posterity.' 

"The  Commission  dated  23d  December,  1641,  was,  in  its  original 
form,  to  take  an  account  of  losses.  It  Avas  amended  on  the  18th  of 
January,  1642,  to  include  murders.  So  that  this  was  an  after- 
thought; a  thing  scarce  possible  if  there  had  been  a  general  massacre. 
The  first  Commission  recites  '  that  many  British  and  Protestants  have 
been  separated  from  their  habitations,  and  others  deprived  of  their 
goods';  the  Commissioners  are  accordingly  to  examine  upon  oath 
concerning  the  amount  of  loss,  the  names  of  the  robbers,  and  what 
traitorous  speeches  were  uttered  by  the  robbers  or  others.  The  sec- 
ond adds,  'and  what  violence  was  done  by  the  robbers,  and  how 
often,  and  what  numbers  have  been  murthered,  or  have  perished 
afterwards,  oh  the  way  to  Dublin  or  elsewhere.'  And  the  remon- 
strance shows  that  the  outrages,  in  spite  of  the  Commissioners' 
attempt  to  present  the  most  terrible  pictures,  were,  for  the  most 
part,  only  such  as  necessarily  followed  the  stripping  the  English  and 
driving  them  from  their  possessions,  as  those  Planters  had  driven  the 
Irish  from  theirs  thirty  years  before,  and  that  the  murders  were  fewer 
than  have  occurred  in  similar  insurrections,  where  of  course  some 
would  be  slain  resisting  the  pillagers  of  their  homesteads.  The  Com- 
missioners seem  unconscious  of  any  general  massacre.  The  murders 
they  record  are  the  occurrences  of  four  months,  collected  from  differ- 
ent parts  of  Ulster.  In  the  few  instances  where  any  numbers  were 
slain,  some  of  them,  at  least,  were  plainly  acts  of  war,  though  the 
Commissioners  would  have  them  supposed  to  be  cold-blooded  mur- 
ders, and  occurred  late  in  December.  So  far,  therefore,  from 
warranting  the  supposed  extensive  massacre  of  the  English,  this 
official  account  disproves  it,  and  shows  how  baseless  is  Clarendon's 
storv  of  40,000  or  50,000  English  murdered  before  they  knew  where 


Colonel  Henry  O'Neill  Speaks.  289 

they  were,  or  of  an  incredible  number  of  men,  women,  and  children 
promiscuously  slaughtered  in  ten  days,  as  he  elsewhere  has  it ;  or  of 
154,000  or  300,000  massacred  in  cold  blood.  The  letters  of  the 
Lord  Justices  during  the  first  months  of  the  Eebellion  are  equally 
silent  concerning  any  massacre;  and  their  proclamation  of  8th  Feb- 
ruary, 1642,  while  it  falsely  charges  the  Irish  with  the  design,  says  it 
had  failed."* 

We  also  possess,  happily  for  the  cause  of  historical  truth,  another 
authentic  contemporary  document,  which,  while  giving  us  a  clear  and 
simple  statement  of  the  motives  of  the  insurgents,  disproves  the 
reckless  assertions  of  Temple,  Clarendon,  Hume,  and  Warwick. 
That  is  Colonel  Henry  O'J^eill's  "Impartial  Eelation"  of  the  Con- 
federates under  Owen  Eoe  from  1641  to  1650. 

"1641. — After  the  commotions  betwixt  England  and  Scotland, 
about  the  beginning  of  October,  Sir  Phelim  O'JSTeill,  Sir  Con  Ma- 
genis,  Colonel  O'Brien,  Colonel  Butler,  with  several  others  of  the 
nation,  had  several  regiments  of  foot  ready  to  march  for  Catalonia, 
with  the  King's  permission,  the  Spanish  ambassador  having  prevailed 
then  with  his  majesty  to  send  over  such  levies  of  the  Irish,  when  a 
noise  came  amongst  the  Koman  Catholics  of  Ulster  (confirmed  soon 
after  by  a  letter  intercepted  from  Scotland,  to  one  Freeman  of  An- 
trim) that  a  puritan  army  was  ready  to  come  for  Ireland,  under  the 
command  of  General  Leslie,  to  suppress  and  extirpate  the  Roman 
Catholics  of  Ulster  from  amongst  the  Scotch;  and  to  that  end  a  pri- 
vate declaration  passed  in  their  private  meetings  or  council,  to  lay 
heavy  fines  on  each  of  them  as  would  not  appear  at  their  Kirk  the 
first  and  second  Sundays,  and  the  third  Sunday  to  hang  (without 
mercy)  at  their  own  doors,  as  many  as  would  prove  obstinate;  which 
rigid  and  inhuman  way  of  reforming,  struck  such  a  terror  in  the 
minds  of  the  people,  that  every  one  thought  of  his  own  safety,  or 
some  general  method  of  defence  against  so  great  a  danger.  Where- 
upon a  convocation  of  the  prime  gentlemen  of  the  province  met,  and 

*'  Cromwellian  Conquest,"  pp.  60,  61.     The  Abstract  of  the  Lord   Justices' 
Letter  Book,  from  1611  till  1644.     Carte  Papers,  vol.  68,  No.  132. 

19 


290  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

communicated  their  thoughts  and  apprehensions  to  each  other,  and 
to  some  gentlemen  in  Leinster,  who  joining  their  heads  together, 
resolved  to  send  immediately  an  express  by  one  abbot  Conally,  abbot 
of  Climes,  to  Owen  O'JSTeill  and  other  Irish  officers  in  Flanders,  to 
acquaint  them  of  the  present  state  of  the  Kingdom,  and  how  the 
Roman  Catholics  were  threatened  by  the  Scotch  puritans  aud  Eng- 
lish presbyterians,  and  that  they  would  for  their  own  present  safety, 
endeavour  to  secure  as  many  magazined  forts  and  garrisons  in  the 
north  as  possible,  &c.  In  order  to  which,  on  the  2  2d  of  October, 
1641,  Sir  Phelim  O'Neill  surprised  Charlemont,  and  Sir  Con  Magenis 
the  Newry  and  other  places;  and  at  the  same  time  gentlemen  em- 
ployed on  the  same  design  to  Dublin,  being  discovered,  took  no 
effect. 

"Soon  after  this,  the  Scots  in  the  north  began  their  bloody  mas- 
sacres iu  the  counties  of  Downe  and  Antrim,  at  Island  Magee,  Bally- 
dary,  Clonleck,  Cumber,  Gallagh,  and  Magheravorn,  500  poor  souls 
destroyed  without  regard  to  age  or  sex,  and  that  before  one  drop  of 
blood  was  spilt  by  any  Eoman  Catholic;  though  afterwards,  when 
these  unparalleled  murthers  were  known,  some  of  the  loosest  of  the 
Irish  rabble,  being  exasperated  thereat,  did,  by  way  of  retaliation, 
murther  some  British  at  Portadown,  Clancan,  Curbridge,  and 
Belturbet."* 

This  narrative  bears  the  stamp  of  soldierly  simplicity  and  trutli. 
Not  only  were  Sir  Phelim  O'Neill's  first  feats  of  arms  unstained  by 
wholesale  massacres  of  the  defenceless  and  im warlike;  but  not  "one 
drop  of  blood  was  spilt  by  any  Roman  Catholic,"  till  the  mass  of  the 
people  became  "exasperated"  by  the  "bloody  massacres"  that  began 
at  Island  Magee,  and  fired  the  national  heart  with  a  fierce  indignation 
which  Religion  alone  could  moderate  or  control. 

This  narrative,  moreover,  seems  to  fix  the  date  of  the  massacre  at 
Island  Magee,  a  point  much  debated  among  historians.     On  the  15th 


*  Gilbert,  "Hist,  of  Affairs  in  Ireland,  1641-16")2,"  vol.  iii.,  part  ii.,  pp.  196,  197. 
Also  in  Carte  Papers,  Ixiv.,  p.  453. 


Humane  inte7itions  of  the  first  Insurgents.  291 

November,  1641,  the  Castle  of  Lurgan  surrendered  to  Sir  Phelim 
O'Xeill,  wlio, — in  violation,  it  is  said,  of  the  conditions  stipulated, 
kept  the  commander  and  his  family  prisoners,  "killed  most  of  his 
servants,  and  treated  all  the  townsmen  in  the  same  manner.''  This 
behavior  of  Sir  Phelim's  at  Lurgan  on  Nov.  15,  is  absolutely  ojjposed 
to  that  which  had  distinguished  him  on  the  5th  at  Ballaghie,  where 
the  articles  of  capitulation  were  scrupulously  observed,  and  the 
people  were  allowed  to  carry  away  all  they  possessed,  with  "trunks 
full  of  plate  and  money."  If  Sir  Phelim  did  shed  blood  on  this 
occasion,  it  must  be  after  the  massacre  at  Island  Magee  and  in  re- 
taliation for  that  atrocious  deed.  But  Colonel  Henry  O'NeiU's 
silence  about  this  occurrence  at  Lurgan,  would  induce  any  fair- 
minded  reader  to  suspend  judgment  about  its  truth.  He  speaks  of 
the  deeds  of  revenge  committed  by  "the  Irish  rabble,"  after  the  mas- 
sacres enumerated  above  had  been  bruited  abroad. 

What,  then,  was  this  massacre  of  Island  Magee,  which  some 
writers  assign  as  the  immediate  cause  of  the  rising  of  October  23, 
1661?  The  country  folk,  the  poor  oppressed  and  enslaved  native 
Catholics  around  Carrickfergus,  in  the  first  alarm  and  terror  con- 
sequent on  the  uprising,  fled  for  safety  into  a  peninsula  on  the  coast 
known  as  Island  Magee.  The  Protestant  refugees  in  Carrickfergus, 
in  revenge  for  the  loss  of  their  homes,  united  with  the  Scotch  gar- 
rison, and  fell  by  night  on  the  multitude  assembled  in  the  Peninsula, 
and  put  them  to  the  sword  without  discrimination  of  age  or  sex. 
Carte,  though  himself  uncertain  as  to  the  exact  date  of  this  slaughter, 
says  "it  is  confidently  asserted,  that  the  said  massacre  happened  in 
this  month  of  November." 

The  Irish  need  no  justification  for  rising  against  the  tyranny  of 
the  men  who  ruled  the  land  from  Dublin  Castle;  they  would  have 
been  less  than  men,  if  believing  that  Scotch  and  English  Puritanism 
was  invading  Ireland  to  blot  out  with  the  last  Celt  the  last  vestige  of 
Catholicism,  they  did  not  make  a  supreme  effort  to  defend  their 
ruined  altars,  their  hunted  bishops  and  priests,  their  own  threatened 
lives  and  the  lives  of  their  dear  ones.     We  must  take  the  Proclama- 


292  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

tion  issued  on  the  very  day  of  the  rising,  as  the  solemn  expression  of 
the  aims  and  spirit  of  the  insurgents. 

"These  are  to  intimate  and  make  known  unto  all  persons  whatso- 
ever in  and  throughout  the  whole  country,  that  the  true  intention 
and  meaning  of  us  whose  names  are  hereunto  subscribed.  .  .  .  The 
present  assembling  ...  is  no  ways  intended  against  our  sovereign 
Lord  the  King,  nor  the  hurt  of  any  of  his  subjects,  either  of  the 
English  or  Scottish  nation;  but  only  for  the  defence  and  liberty  of 
ourselves  and  the  Irish  natives  of  this  kingdom.  And  we  hereby 
further  expressly  declare  that  whatever  hurt  hitherto  hath  been  done 
to  any  person  or  persons  whatsoever  shall  be  presently  repaired. 
And  we  will  that  every  person  forthwith,  after  proclamation  hereof, 
make  their  speedy  repaire  unto  their  own  houses  under  pain  of  death, 
and  that  no  further  hurt  be  done  to  any  one  under  like  pain." 

"One  work  out  of  many  written  at  the  time  in  defence  of  the 
Irish,  and  thus  destroyed  (by  order  of  the  Government),  has  survived. 
It  seems  to  be  a  reprint  at  Kilkenny,  in  December,  1642,  of  a  work 
published  in  London,  in  the  form  of  a  discourse  between  a  Privy 
Councillor  of  Ireland  and  one  of  the  Council  of  England.  The  Privy 
Councillor  of  Ireland  treats  of  the  causes  of  the  Insurrection,  taking 
up  Irish  grievances  from  the  Earl  of  Strafford's  government  in  1G33, 
and  touches  towards  the  end  upon  the  collection  of  outrages  by  the 
seven  despoiled  ministers,  called  the  Remonstrance,  which  was  pub- 
lished in  the  month  of  April,  1642.  He  does  not  confute  the  massa- 
cre, only  because  none  is  charged.  His  complaint  is  that  they  have 
given  an  exaggerated  account  of  murders  and  outrages. — 'Doubtless 
the  Irish  did,  in  many  places,'  he  says,  ''  kill  men  resisting  them  in 
their  pillaging;  but  the  report  of  their  killing  women,  or  men  desir- 
ing quarter,  and  such  like  inhumanities,  were  inventions  to  draw 
contributions,  and  make  the  enemy  odiou-s.  But  sure  I  am  (he  con- 
tinues) that  there  was  no  such  thing  done  while  I  w^as  there  in  Ireland 
about  six  months  after  these  sturres  began.  And  though  unarmed 
men,  women,  and  children  were  killed  in  thousands  by  command  of 
the  Lords  Justices,  the  Irish  sent  multitudes  of  our  people,  both 


The  '"''Popish  Massacres"  a  Cimning  Invention.  293 

before  and  since  these  cruelties  done,  as  Avell  officers  and  soldiers  as 
women  and  children,  carefully  conveyed,  to  the  seaports  and  other 
places  of  safety;  so  let  us  call  them  lohat  we  will, — bloody  inhuman 
traitors,  or  barbaroics  rebels, — we  have  suffered  ourselves  to  be  much 
exceeded  by  them  in  charity,  humanity,  and  honour.'  To  hear  the 
English  complain  of  massacre  is  about  as  entertaining  as  it  proved  to 
the  Rhegians  to  hear  the  Carthaginians  complain  of  anything  elfected 
by  guile.  For  it  was  only  Victory  that  decided,  with  her  usual  con- 
tempt for  justice,  that  the  Irish,  and  not  the  English,  should  be 
noted  to  the  world  for  massacre."* 

Tliese  "Popish  Massacres"  are,  therefore,  an  invention  of  Protes- 
tant Irish  and  English  writers.  Sir  John  I'emple,  whose  work,  pub- 
lished in  London,  was  written  to  fan  the  flames  of  national  and  relig- 
ious hatred  against  the  Irish  Catholics,  succeeded  in  his  ignoble 
purpose.  The  mischief  he  helped  to  do  we  care  not  now  to  estimate. 
But  he  lived  to  blush  for  the  evil  notoriety  his  abominable  falsehoods 
had  gained  him.  The  booksellers  of  London,  in  1674,  finding  that 
the  work  was  out  of  print  and  that  its  popularity  was  undiminished, 
urged  the  author  to  issue  another  edition.  He  refused.  Lord  Es- 
sex, who  was  at  the  time  Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland,  writing  to  Mr. 
Coventry,  Secretary  of  State,  on  Jan.  6,  1674-5,  thus  mentions  the 
fact:  "You  mention  a  book  that  was  newly  published,  concerning 
the  cruelties  committed  in  Ireland,  at  the  beginning  of  the  late  war. 
Upon  further  inquiry  I  find  Sir  J.  Temple,  Master  of  the  Eolls  here, 
author  of  that  book,  was  this  last  year  sent  to  by  several  stationers  of 
London,  to  have  his  consent  to  the  printing  thereof.  But  he  assures 
me  that  he  utterly  denied  it;  and  whoever  printed  it,  did  it  without 
his  knowledge.  Thus  much  I  thought  fit  to  add  to  what  I  formerly 
said  upon  this  occasion,  that  I  might  do  this  gentleman  right,  in  case 
it  was  suspected  he  had  any  share  in  publishing  this  new  edition."! 

*  Prendergast,  "  The  Cromwellian  Conquest,"  70-71.  The  work  here  quoted 
by  Mr.  Prendergast— himself  a  Protestant — is  entitled:  "  A  Discourse  between  two 
Councillors  of  State,  the  one  of  England,  and  the  other  of  Ireland."  Kilkenny, 
Dec.  10,  1612.     Copy  in  MSS.,  Carte  Papers,  vol.  iv..  No.  54. 

t  "  Letters  of  Essex"  (4to.  London,  1770),  p.  2. 


294  The  Causa  of  Ireland. 

What,  then,  could  have  been  the  purpose  of  this  Conspiracy  of 
Falsehood  and  Perjury  into  which  Sir  John  Temple  entered  Avith  his 
fellow-calumniators  Buijton,  Warwick,  Kapin  and  Borlase, — without 
mentioning  the  Historian  Hume  ? 

To  nurse  to  its  full  growth  that  ferocious  and  fanatical  public 
opinion,  then  prevailing  in  the  Protestant  Communit}"  on  both  sides 
of  the  Channel,  and  calling  for  the  annihilation  of  the  Celtic  race 
and  the  Catholic  Eeligion  in  Ireland.  This  public  opinion  held  up 
as  legitimate  and  meritorious  a  war  of  extermination  against  the 
"Irish  Papists."  The  pretended  massacres,  while  exciting  to  the 
highest  pitch  the  hatred  of  race  against  race  and  of  the  followers  of 
one  religion  against  those  of  another, — stimulated  the  characteristic 
land-hunger  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  and  the  Xorman,  by  urging  all  who 
had  money  to  contribute  it  toward  the  war  in  Ireland,  and  holding 
out  the  broad  lands  of  the  Irish  Catholics  as  the  result  of  the  venture 
and  the  prize  to  be  won  by  the  soldier. 

The  Lords  Justices  in  Dublin  Castle,  as  well  as  the  men  who  pros- 
tituted their  pens  and  their  conscience  in  the  work  of  misrepresenta- 
tion, were  all  laboring  together  to  further  that  war  of  extermination, 
which  culminated  in  the  massacres  of  Cromwell,  the  driving  of  the 
Catholic-Irish  into  Connaught. 

The  insurrection  for  several  months  after  October  23,  1641,  was 
confined  to  Ulster.  It  was  the  interest  and  the  purposes  of  the  men 
who  governed  in  Dublin  to  cause  it  to  extend  to  every  province  and 
county  in  Ireland.  This  is  evident  from  the  manner  in  which  the 
Lords  Justices  and  their  subordinates  goaded  to  madness  and  per- 
secuted the  Catholics,  whether  of  English  or  of  Celtic  stock,  in  those 
provinces  to  wliicli  the  insurrection  had  not  spread. 

In  Munster,  which  remained  perfectly  tranquil  while  the  ^orth 
resounded  with  the  clash  of  arms.  Lord  Muskery,  a  Catholic,  offered 
to  raise  and  equip  at  his  own  expense  one  thousand  men.  This  offer 
was  rejected  by  the  Lords  Justices.  About  the  middle  of  December 
some  bands  of  idle  vagabonds  from  various  parts  of  Tipperary  began 
to  pillage  and  ransom  the  rich  proprietors;  among  the  sufferers  was  a 


Si.  Lege?'  spreads  the  Insurrection  in  Munster.  295 

brother-in-law  of  Sir  William  St.  Leger,  the  Lord  President  of  Mun- 
ster. Thereupon  the  latter,  under  pretence  of  following  up  the 
marauders  and  recovering  the  cattle  they  had  driven  off,  scoured  the 
country  with  a  body  of  horse,  killing,  hanging  and  burning,  without 
stopping  to  inquire  who  were  the  innocent  and  which  the  guilty. 
The  chief  nobles  and  gentlemen  of  the  country  waited  upon  St.  Leger 
and  remonstrated  with  him  on  this  wanton  and  indiscriminate 
cruelty.  The  people,  they  said,  were  exasperated,  and  were  assem- 
bling tumultuously.  To  secure  the  peace  they — the  nobles  and 
gentlemen — requested  to  be  actively  employed  in  maintaining  order. 

"The  President" — says  Carte — ".  .  .  in  a  hasty  and  furious  man- 
ner answered  then,  '  that  they  were  all  rebels;  and  he  would  not 
trust  one  soul  of  them;  but  thought  it  more  prudent  to  hang  the  best 
of  them.'  And  in  this  extraordinary  passion  he  continued  all  the 
while  these  and  other  persons  of  quality,  their  neighbors,  were  wait- 
ing upon  him.  This  made  them  all  withdraw  ajid  return  to  their 
houses,  much  resenting  this  rudeness  and  severity,  as  well  as  very  un- 
certain about  their  own  safety;  some  of  them  imagining  that  this 
distrusting  of  their  loyalty  and  destroying  of  their  reputations  was 
only  the  preface  to  a  design  of  taking  away  their  lives. 

"From  Clonmell,  Sir  W.  St.  Leger  marched  into  the  county  of 
Waterford,  and  his  soldiers  on  the  way,  as  they  went  and  returned 
from  the  rout  of  the  Wexford  rebels,  killed  several  harmless  poor 
people,  not  at  all  concerned  in  the  rebellion,  or  in  the  plunder  of  the 
country;  which  also  incensed  the  gentlemen  of  that  county."  * 

All  this,  as  the  reader  already  foresees,  is  only  the  carrying  out  of 
the  design  conceived  by  the  Lords  Justices,  communicated  to  such 
willing  subordinates  as  St.  Leger,  and  by  them  accepted  and  acted 
upon. 

It  is  better,  however,  in  order  to  establish  the  fact  of  this  nefarious 
plot  beyond  all  doubt,  to  give  at  once  our  proofs. 

In  Wright's  one-sided  history,  where  the  "massacres"  perpetrated 

*  Ccarte,  vol.  i.,  p.  261. 


296  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

by  the  Ulster  insurgents  are  set  forth  in  order  to  excite  the  wrath  of 
the  Enghsh  public, — we  still  find  the  author  forced  to  confess  that 
the  Lords  Justices  Parsons  and  Borlase  acted,  all  through  these  days 
of  terror  and  alarm,  consistently  with  their  cherished  purpose  of  pro- 
voking a  general  insurrection,  and  of  inducing  the  English  Parlia- 
ment and  nation  to  make  of  its  suppression  a  war  of  extermination. 

Their  first  step  was  to  usurp  all  the  executive  and  legislative  jiow- 
ers,  so  as  to  have  no  check  in  carrying  out  their  contemplated  meas- 
ures. The  Irish  Parliament  stood  prorogued  till  the  beginning  of 
November;  they  prorogued  it  still  further  till  the  following  February. 
The  Courts  of  Law  were  adjourned;  that  of  Exchequer  alone  being 
kept  open  to  receive  and  collect  the  royal  revenues.  The  Catholics 
of  the  Pale  who  had  little,  if  any,  sympathy  with  the  northern  insur- 
gents, offered  their  services  to  the  Privy  Council,  and  asked  for  arms. 
This  embarrassed  the  Government.  "For  the  Lords  Justices  were 
actuated  by  a  puritanical  hatred  of  Papists.  .  .  .  They  delivered  out 
a  small  quantity  of  arms  and  ammunition  to  those  who  were  more 
exposed  to  danger,  with  the  determination  not  to  arm  the  Pale  effect- 
uall}^  until  they  were  driven  to  it  by  absolute  necessity." 

The  alarm  and  confusion  in  the  capital,  though  very  deeply  felt 
by  the  mass  of  the  citizens,  were  not,  assuredly,  shared  in  by  the 
Government.  All  their  movements  were  those  of  men  who  were 
playing  a  part.  They  had  laid  the  train,  and  fired  the  fuse,  and 
could  not  be  astonished  by  the  explosion.  Two  regiments  were  lev- 
ied among  the  fugitives  who  came  crowding  into  Dublin;  one  of  them 
was  sent  to  Drogheda  under  Sir  Henry  Tichborne,  the  other  was 
placed  under  the  command  of  Sir  Charles  Coote.  "And  these  troops, 
as  might  easily  be  expected  from  the  materials  of  which  they  were 
composed,  were  but  too  ready  Avhen  the  occasion  offered,  to  revenge 
their  own  sufferings  by  savage  reprisals  upon  their  enemies,"  Thus 
Mr.  Wright. 

On  the  25tli  of  October,  two  days  after  the  first  outbreak  in  the 
North,  the  Lords  Justices  sent  the  informer  Owen  O'Connolly,  with 
a   letter  to  Lord   Leicester,    the   Lord   Lieutenant  in  London,   de- 


Eiiglaml  to  ^'' Cuajuar'''  Ireland  over  again.  297 

manding  ii  lai'ge  subsidy  from  the  English  Parliament  and  a  pension 
for  the  informer,  who  had  well  acted  his  part  in  the  farce  of  "dis- 
covering" a  Plot,  which  Parsons  and  Borlase  had  so  sedulously 
hatched  from  the  beginning. 

Parliament  acceded  to  both  demands,  and  decreed  "that  the  Eng- 
lish Papists  of  any  quality  should  be  secured  in  the  counties  in  which 
they  were  residing,  and  that  no  person  except  merchants  should  be 
allowed  to  pass  over  into  Ireland  without  a  certificate  from  the  Com- 
mittee of  both  Houses  of  Parliament,  which  was  appointed  at  the 
same  time  for  the  exclusive  consideration  of  Irish  affairs."  To  this 
Joint  Committee,  from  tiiis  moment  forward,  belongs  in  fact  all  the 
sovereign  powers  of  the  Executive  in  dealing  with  Ireland.  Parsons 
and  Borlase  will  use  it  as  an  instrument  for  their  own  purpose,  while 
seemingly  only  executing  its  decrees. 

Every  possible  means  is  taken  to  raise  to  the  highest  i^itch  in  Eng- 
land and  Scotland  the  terror  and  fierce  anger  caused  by  the  first  news 
of  the  "massacres"  in  Ireland.  Steps  were  taken  to  have  2,000  Scots 
sent  directly  from  their  own  country  to  the  aid  of  their  countrymen 
in  Ulster,  though  these,  as  we  have  seen,  had  suffered  no  molestation 
from  the  insurgents.  In  England,  it  was  resolved  to  raise  for  the 
same  purpose  a  force  of  G,000  foot  and  2,000  horse. 

Meanwhile  Parsons  and  Borlase  remained  inactive,  allowing  the 
tidings  sent  to  England,  like  fire  set  to  o,  prairie  in  midsummer,  to 
spread  all  through  the  land.  In  Ireland  the  Earl  of  Ormonde,  who 
commanded  the  army,  was  impatient  to  march  against  the  insurgents; 
but  was  prevented  from  doing  so  by  the  Lords  Justices.  "The 
timidity  of  the  Governors  gave  rise  to  a  variety  of  rumors;  some 
attributing  it  to  a  want  of  courage;  others  to  jealousy  of  the  Earl  of 
Ormonde;  and  others,  who  look  further  into  the  causes  of  things, 
acrupled  not  to  say  that  tJie  Lords  Justices  were  unwilling  to  put  a 
speedy  end  to  the  insurrection,  but  that  they  were  desirous  of  urging 
the  great  Catholic  families  into  it,  with  a  view  to  new  and  extensive 
confiscations The  first  intelligence  of  the  proceedings  in  Eng- 
land, and  of  the  preparations  for  sending  over  an  English  army,  was 


298  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

received  with  the  utmost  exultation,  and  decided  the  Lords  Justices 
in  exhibiting  more  openly  their  hatred  to  the  Catholics  in  general. 
They  no  longer  concealed  their  suspicions  of  the  loyalty  of  the  Cath- 
olics of  the  Pale,  and  they  recalled  those  arms  which  they  had  in- 
trusted to  them,  thus  leaving  them  Avithout  means  of  defence.  This 
step  was  followed  by  several  other  unpopular  or  unwise  measures. 

"A  new  proclamation  appeared,  commanding  all  persons,  except 
the  ordinary  inhabitants  of  the  Capital,  to  leave  it  wdthin  twenty-four 
hours,  under  pain  of  death.  The  pretext  for  this  measure  was,  that 
the  landholders  and  tenantry  of  the  Pale,  by  flying  to  the  Capital, 
left  their  lands  without  defence;  but  its  effect,  luliicli  could  hardly 
have  been  unforeseen,  was  to  compel  them  to  seek  that  protection 
which  was  denied  them  in  Dublin,  by  joining  in  the  rebellion. 

"The  Irish  Government  suppressed  or  rendered  ineffective  by 
their  exceptions  and  qualifications,  the  order  of  the  English  Parlia- 
ment to  offer  a  general  pardon  to  such  of  the  rebels  as  would  submit 
within  a  given  time,  a  measure  Avhicli  could  hardly  have  failed  at 
that  moment  to  produce  the  most  beneficial  effect;  and  their  object 
in  the  suppression  could  hardly  be  doubted,  when  it  was  observed 
that  in  the  few  counties  least  affected  by  the  rebellion,  where  the 
pardon  w^as  offered,  it  was  combined  2vith  a  general  exce]3tion  of  the 
freeholders.^''  * 

The  historian,  after  describing  the  assembling  of  the  Irish 
Chambers  for  the  17th  of  November, — a  single  day  session,  at  first, 
and  then  lengthened  by  a  second  day, — says  that  two  memorials  were 
sent  to  England:  one  to  the  King,  asking  for  a  confirmation  of  "the 
graces,"  and  the  appointment  of  Ormonde  to  the  lord-lieutenancy;  the 
other  from  the  Lords  Justices  to  the  Earl  of  Leicester,  representing 
to  him  and  the  English  Privy  Council,  that  the  demands  made  of  the 
King  were  only  to  "benefit  the  Irish  at  the  expense  of  England." 
They  said  his  (i.  e..  Lord  Dillon,  bearer  of  the  memorial  to  the  King) 
object  was  to  possess  the  King  Avitli  the  belief  that  Ireland  might  be 

*  Wright's  "Hist,  of  Ireland,"  under  year  1641,  vol.  i. 


Why  they  were  glad  of  the  ReheUion  in  England.  29J 

reduced  to  obedience  by  its  own  resources;  whereas  if  the  Parliament 
would  enter  vigorously  upon  the  work  of  conquest  with  an  English 
army  and  English  money,  it  would  soon  repay  itself  with  immense 
advantage  by  the  extensive  forfeiture  of  the  estates  of  Irish  Catho- 
lics. This  bait  took  with  the  House  of  Commons.  When  Lord 
Dillon  had  embarked  with  Lord  Taafe  to  carry  the  memorial  to  the 
King,  a  sudden  storm  drove  them  from  their  direct  course;  and  when 
at  length  they  proceeded  on  their  way  to  London,  on  reaching  Ware 
they  were  seized  by  a  warrant  of  the  House  of  Commons,  their  papers 
were  taken  and  suppressed,  and  they  were  retained  in  custody  until 
their  mission  was  of  no  importance,  and  then  they  were  suffered  to 
escape."  * 

We  quote  this  writer  because  his  evident  partiality  will  only  per- 
mit him  to  say  against  the  English  side  what  no  ingenuity  can  enable 
him  to  suppress  or  to  disguise. 

It  is  forever  placed  on  record,  therefore,  as  unquestionable  histor- 
ical truth,  that  the  Irish  Government,  controlled  by  Parsons  and 
Borlase,  not  only  did  not  suppress  the  insurrection  which  they  had 
provoked,  but  laljored  to  spread  it;  that  they  withheld  or  mutilated 
the  proclamation  of  pardon  issued  by  the  English  Parliament;  and 
entered  into  a  conspiracy  with  that  Parliament,  "to  conquer  Ireland 
with  an  English  army  supported  by  English  money;  and  that  the 
object  held  out  to  Parliament  and  People  was  the  extensive  forfeiture 
of  the  estates  of  Irish  Catholics." 

In  the  Journals  of  the  House  of  Commons  is  recorded  collateral 
evidence,  which  should  be  read  to  convince  one's  self  of  the  condition 
of  the  public  mind  of  England  in  relation  to  this  conquest.  Let  the 
most  incredulous  read  the  following  and  then  judge  for  himself. 

"  February  1, 1641-2. 
''^Proposition  made  by  divers  gentlemen,  citizens,  and  others,  for  the 
speedy  and  effectual  reducing  of  the  Kingdom  of  Ireland. 
"  1st.  They  do  compute  that  less  than  a  million  of  money  will  not 
perfect  that  work. 

*  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  i.,  p.  697. 


tJOO  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

"2d.  Tliey  do  conceive,  that  the  work  being  finished)  tliere  will 
be  in  that  Kingdom,  of  confiscated  lands,  such  as  go  under  the  name 
of  profitable  lands,  ten  millions  of  acres,  English  measure. 

"3d.  That  two  millions  and  a  half  of  those  acres,  to  be  equally 
taken  out  of  the  four  provinces,  will  sufficiently  satisfy  those  that 
shall  advance  the  million  of  money. 

"4th.  That  the  two  millions  and  a  half  of  acres  may  be  divided 
amongst  them  after  this  proportion,  viz. : 

For  each  adventure  of  £200,  a  thousand  acres  in  Ulster. 

"  "  £300,  "  "  Connaught. 

"  "  £450,  "  "  Munster. 

"  "  £600,  "  "  Leinster. 

"All  English  measure,  consisting  of  meadow,  arable  and  profitable 
pasture:  the  bogs,  woods,  and  barren  mountains  being  cast  in,  over 
and  above. 

"These  two  millions  and  a  half  of  acres  to  be  liolden  in  free  and 
common  socage  of  the  King,  as  of  his  Castle  of  Dublin. 

"5th.  That  out  of  these  two  millions  and  a  half  of  acres,  a  con- 
stant rent  shall  be  reserved  to  the  Crown  of  England,  after  this 
proportion,  viz.: 

"  Out  of  each  acre  thereof  in 

Ulster Id. 

Connaught 2^c7, 

Munster 2|f/. 

Leinster 3f?. 

"Whereby  his  Majesty's  revenue,  out  of  these  lands,  will  be  much 
improved,  besides  the  advantage  that  he  will  have,  by  the  coming  to 
his  hands  of  all  other  the  lands  of  the  rebels  and  their  personal 
estates,  without  any  charge  to  his  Majesty."  * 

As  we  have  seen  from  the  narrative  of  the  historian  Wright,  the 
English  Parliament  was  but  too  ready  to  accept  such  "propositions." 
An  act  was  passed  without  delay,  declaring  that  "Whereas,  divers 
worthy  and  well  affected  persons,  perceiving  that  many  millions  of 
acres  of  the  rebels'  lands  of  that  kingdom  (Ireland),  which  go  under 


*  '< 


Journals  of  the  House  of  Commons  of  England,"  ii.,  435. 


Result  of  this  Macchiavellian  Policy.  301 

the  name  of  profitable  lands,  will  be  confiscate  and  to  be  disposed  of, 
and  that  in  that  case  two  millions  and  a  half  of  those  acres,  to  be 
equally  taken  out  of  the  four  provinces  of  that  kingdom,  may  be 
allotted  for  the  satisfaction  of  snch  persons  as  shall  disburse  any 
sums  of  money  for  the  reducing  of  the  rebels  there,  which  would 
effectually  accomplish  the  same,  have  made  these  propositions  en- 
suing, &c."* 

Leland  records  the  same  fact;  and  with  his  acknowledgment  we 
close  this  particular  argument. 

"The  Commons  of  England  had  very  early  petitioned  that  the 
King  would  not  alienate  any  of  the  esclieated  lands,  that  might 
accrue  to  the  Crown  from  the  rebellion  in  Ireland:  and  they  had 
lately  proceeded  in  a  scheme  for  raising  money  from  the  lands  thus 
expected  to  escheat,  A  bill  was  framed  for  repaying  those  who 
should  advance  certain  sums,  for  repressing  of  the  rebels,  (as  was 
pretended)  by  vesting  them  with  proportional  estates  in  Ireland.  It 
evidently  tended  to  exasperate  the  malcontents,  and  to  make  all 
accommodation  desperate;  but  it  was  not  on  this  account  less  accept- 
able to  the  popular  leaders."  f 

By  this  Macchiavellian  policy  the  entire  Catholic  population  of 
Ireland  was  driven  into  insurrection;  rebellion  we  cannot,  must  not 
call  it,  knowing  that  the  King  encoiiraged  the  rising,  though  he 
dared  not  openly  give  it  his  approbation.  Nay,  when  the  conflict 
with  the  Long  Pai'liament  was  about  to  enter  on  its  last  stage,  Charles 
was  only  prevented  from  crossing  over  to  Ireland  and  placing  himself 
at  the  head  of  the  Catholic  forces,  by  the  threat  of  the  Commons  that 
they  would  consider  his  departure  to  be  an  abdication  of  the  throne. 
They  were  but  too  well  aware  that  the  King's  only  hope,  in  his  then 
desperate  strait,  was  to  use  O'Neill's  army  as  his  own.  The  rebels, — 
in  the  real  legal  sense  of  the  term, — were  the  Irish  Government  in 
Dublin  Castle  and  the  Parliament  that  sat  in  Westminster,  with  the 


*Rusbworth,  "Historical  Collection   of  Private  Passages  of  State,"  vol.  iv,, 
p.  556. 

t  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  iii.,  186. 


303  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

armed  bands  of  English  and  Scotch  Puritans  then  leagued  against 
the  royal  authority. 

Why  should  we  deem  it  necessary  to  relate  here  the  steps  by  which 
Parsons  and  Borlase  forced  the  Catholics  of  the  Pale,  and  with  them 
the  Anglo-Irish  Catholics  throughout  the  other  provinces,  to  unite 
with  the  insurgents?  Or  why  should  we  relate  the  horrible  cruelties 
committed  in  Dublin  and  the  adjoining  counties  by  Sir  Charles  Coote, 
and  the  men  who  disgraced  the  sacred  names  of  religion,  humanity 
and  civilization  by  excesses  worthy  of  the  most  ferocious  savages  of 
Africa,  or  Xortli  America  ? 

The  two  Irish  Chambers,  from  which  all  Catholics  had  been  ex- 
pelled, acted  entirely  under  the  direction  of  the  Lords  Justices  and 
the  Privy  Council.  "A  declaration  was  drawn  up  by  them  in  an 
address  to  the  King  and  Parliament  of  England,  praying  that  a  pres- 
ent course  might  be  taken  for  executing  the  penal  laws  in  force  in 
Ireland  against  all  the  Papists  in  that  Kingdom,  and  particularly  in 
the  City  of  Dublin;  that  bills  might  be  transmitted  into  England  in 
order  to  make  all  the  laws  there  against  the  Popish  clergy  and  their 
relievers  to  be  enacted  in  Ireland :  and  that  it  might  not  be  in  the 
power  of  any  governor  of  that  Kingdom,  to  suspend,  inhibit,  or  con- 
nive at,  the  exemption  from  such  laws,  or  any  of  them.  If  it  was  the 
design  of  the  Council  that  the  rebellion  should  be  thought  a  war  of 
religion,  and  a  total  extirpation  of  all  Catholics  and  of  Popery  was 
the  scheme  proposed,  then  nothing  was  more  to  the  purpose  than 
this  declaration.  But  it  was  a  measure  of  which  all  wise  and  good 
men  dreaded  the  consequence."'* 

Then  the  pamphleteering  crusade  undertaken  in  England  against 
the  Irish  Papists,  as  well  as  the  fierce  homilies  and  harangues  de- 
livered for  months  from  Puritan  pulpits, — all  tended  to  impress  the 
excited  imaginations  of  the  English  public  with  the  firm  belief  that 
Ireland  was  another  land  of  Canaan,  and  that  to  exterminate  wholly 
and  without  pity  the  entire  Catholic  population,  was  a  work  as  pleas- 

*  Warner,  p.  212. 


Tlie  Holy   War  for  Irish  Nationality.  303 

ing  to  God  as  the  slaughter  of  the  Canaauites  in  the  days  of  Moses 
and  Joshua. 

Tliis  is  also  an  historrcal  fact. 

In  Ireland,  once  the  ISTobility  and  Gentry  of  the  Pale  were  driven 
into  the  insurgent  ranks,  they  hastened  in  Dublin  and  elsewhere  to 
indict  by  name  all  landed  proprietors,  so  that  the  taint  of  treason 
should  at  once  entail  the  forfeiture  of  their  estates.  Their  lives, 
after  that,  were  also  forfeited.  Carte  tells  us,  that  "above  a  thou- 
sand such  indictments  had  been  found  by  one  Grand  Jury  in  the 
space  of  two  days."  Of  3,000  persons  indicted  on  the  same  grounds, 
"2,000  were  persecuted  to  outlawry  by  Sir  Philip  Percival,  clerk  of 
the  Crown,"  and  their  estates  were  confiscated.  They  were  cited  to 
appear,  when  to  appear  was  certain  death ;  and,  not  appearing,  they 
were  outlawed! 

Thus  in  Dublin.  In  Munster  the  Earl  of  Cork,  with  the  assist- 
ance of  Lords  Barrymore,  Dungarvan,  and  Broghill,  found  juries  to 
bring  in  similar  bills  of  indictment  against  1,100  persons,  all  of  whom 
were  outlawed. 

These  are  only  specimens  of  the  way  in  which  Law  was  adminis- 
tered in  Ireland  by  the  men  who  professed  only  to  aim  at  civilizing, 
refining,  and  elevating  the  natives. 

But  the  war  itself?  It  attracted  the  attention  and  won  the 
sympathy  of  Christendom.  The  accession  of  the  Lords  and  Gentle- 
men of  the  Pale,  and  of  their  compeers  in  Munster  and  Connauglit, 
to  the  forces  under  Phelim  O'Neill,  came  too  late  to  ensure  the  suc- 
cess and  the  prestige  which  a  first  course  of  unsullied  victories  would 
have  gained.  They  came  too  late:  and  they  did  not  bring  their 
heart  to  the  work  of  war.  And  because  they  did  not  go  heart  and 
soul  into  it,  they  proved  to  be  an  element  of  confusion,  of  strife,  of 
division,  of  weakness. 

Utterly  unprepared  and  unprovided  as  were  the  bands  of  half- 
armed  or  wholly  unarmed  Gallowgiass  and  Kerne  who  rallied  round 
the  standards  of  O'Neill,  O'Donnell,  Maguire,  and  O'Eeilly, — they 
gave  to  the  cause  their  whole  heart  and  soul  and  strength;  all  the 


304  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

lofty  devotion  inspired  by  a  love  of  religion  persecuted  and  down- 
trodden, all  the  fiery  enthusiasm  of  the  Celtic  nature  fired  by  the  love 
of  country  and  the  memory  of  such  wrongs  as  a  people  had  not  en- 
dured since  the  days  of  Egyptian  bondage  and  oppression.  The  Celtic 
tribal  or  clannish  organization,  though  shattered  to  fragments  by  the 
preceding  wars,  the  proscription  and  annihilation  of  the  ancient 
chieftaincies,  and  the  breaking  up  of  all  the  old  ties  of  village,  district, 
and  provincial  communities  by  the  plantations  of  Strafford,  James  and 
Elizabeth, — was  still  a  great  force  of  aggregation  at  the  beginning  of 
this  new  struggle  for  Nationality  and  Religion.  It  drew  Creaghts, 
and  Kerne,  and  Gallowglass  from  every  part  of  Ireland  around  the 
representatives  of  the  ancient  and  honored  chiefs.  But  this  very  at- 
tachment to  the  heir  of  each  one  of  the  great  Celtic  names,  turned 
out,  when  there  was  need  of  unity  of  command,  and  U7idivided 
counsels,  to  be  the  source  of  their  greatest  weakness  and  disorgan- 
ization. The  members  of  each  clan  would  fight  only  under  their 
traditional  chief.  Transcendent  military  genius  and  the  ripest  expe- 
rience in  strategy,  counted  for  nothing  when  their  professor  did  not 
bear  the  magic  name  of  Maguire,  or  O'Donnell,  or  O'Neill.  It  was 
a  bitter  humiliation  for  the  Celtic  soldiers  to  march  under  the  com- 
mand of  an  Irish  Catholic  Noble,  no  matter  what  his  rank  or  his 
abilit}^,  when  he  was  only  of  the  Sassmach  blood. 

A  common  religion  and  the  love  of  a  common  country  formed  the 
unitive  forces  which  drew  the  men  of  both  races  together  in  arms 
against  the  common  foe  of  all  that  they  held  dearest  and  most  sacred. 
The  attachment  to  the  ancient  Celtic  chiefs  acted  like  opposite  elec- 
tricities in  repelling  from  each  other  elements,  which,  if  united 
firmly,  must,  by  the  very  weight  of  numbers,  have  borne  down  in  the 
beginning  all  opposition;  and,  as  the  war  advanced,  and  experience 
gave  discipline,  and  success  self-reliance,  they  would,  from  mutual 
contact,  have  learned  mutual  esteem  and  trust. 

But  in  this  paragraph  we  have  foreshadowed  the  issue  of  this 
noble,  this  heroic  struggle,  and  accounted  for  its  failure. 

We  must  not  pass  it  by,  however,  without  recording  the  true 


Protestant  Testimony  to  bloodlessness  of  tlie  Insurrection.      305 

Christian  principles  of  brotherly  love  and  humanity  which  mark  the 
public  declarations  of  the  Confederated  Catholics^  as  well  as  the 
conduct  of  officers  and  soldiers  toward  the  enemy,  armed  and  un- 
armed. 

We  have  seen  above  the  proclamation  issued  by  Phelim  O'Neill  at 
the  very  first  moment  of  the  insurrection.  The  Eemonstrance 
addressed  by  the  Insurgents  of  the  County  Cavan  to  the  Lords  Jus- 
tices and  Council  in  Dublin,  is  that  of  men,  who,  though  sorely 
aggrieved,  despoiled,  oppressed,  and  refused  the  privileges  of  citizen- 
ship, and  the  protection  of  the  laws, — yet  have  refrained  from  blood- 
shed while  rising  to  vindicate  their  national  rights.  They  do  not 
deny  that,  in  the  first  insurrectionary  movement,  disorders  and 
regrettable  acts  of  violence  have  been  committed.  These  are  inevita- 
ble where  any  long-suffering  people  rise  to  shake  off  the  yoke  of  civil 
or  religious  oppression.  "As  for  the  mischiefs  and  inconveniences," 
they  say,  "tliat  have  already  happened  through  the  disorder  of  the 
common  sort  of  people  against  the  English  inhabitants,  or  any  other 
person,  we,  with  the  noblemen  and  gentlemen  of  this  and  each  other 
several  county  of  this  Kingdom,  are  most  willing  and  ready  to  use  our 
and  their  best  endeavors  in  causing  restitution  and  satisfaction  to  be 
made,  as  in  part  we  have  already  done."  And  they  press  the  Gov- 
ernment to  return  a  speedy  and  favorable  answer  to  their  demands, 
"for  avoiding  the  continuance  of  the  barbarity  and  uncivility  of  the 
Commonalty,  who  have  committed  many  outrages  and  insolencies 
Avithout  any  order,  consent,  or  privity  of  ours." 

Dr.  Henry  Jones,  who  bore  this  Remonstrance  to  Dublin,  and  who 
has  left  us  a  detailed  account  of  all  that  happened  in  Cavan  during 
the  first  year  of  the  war, — gives  to  all  the  actions  and  motives  of  the 
O'Reillys  and  their  followers  as  unfavorable  a  coloring  as  he  can,  but 
has,  nevertheless,  no  deed  of  blood  to  register  against  them.  They, 
a  despoiled,  disinherited,  and  disfranchised  people,  rise  in  arms  to 
defend  their  lives  and  the  wretched  and  precarious  homes  left  to 
them  by  the  Plantations  of  James  and  Elizabeth, — against  the  threat- 
ened extirpation  of  their  race  and  religion  by  the  Parliamentarians. 
20 


306  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

How  have  the  popular  masses  been  treated  by  the  Planters,  and  by 
their  civil  and  military  rulers  for  the  last  half  century,  not  in  Cavan 
only,  but  all  through  the  North  ?  We  have  only  to  recall  Thomas 
Blennerhassett's  "hunting  parties"  to  have  a  conception  of  the 
lessons  of  hnmanit}^,  Justice,  and  civilization  the  O'Eeillys  and  Ma- 
guires  with  their  people  have  been  taught.  That  Creaght,  and 
Kerne,  and  Gallowglass,  when  they  rose  to  recover  their  own,  had  no 
grateful  memories  and  showed  no  tender  feelings  of  commiseration  to 
these  Planters,  who  had  run  them  down  and  slaughtered  them,  as 
they  did  the  wolf, — was  surely  not  unnatural.  And  yet  there  was 
neither  massacre,  nor  bloodshed,  nor  brutal  violence  in  the  proceed- 
ings of  these  "  rebels "  during  these  weeks,  which  have  been  repre- 
sented as  weeks  of  indiscriminate  slaughter,  when  "blood  ran  in  rivers 
all  over  the  land."  The  "1,500  souls — men,  women  and  children," 
who  set  forth  together  under  escort  for  the  Pale,  were  set  upon, 
in  leaving  Belturbet,  by  the  lawless  crowd,  eager  for  plunder,  and 
stripped  of  all  they  possessed.  In  spite  of  the  insinuations  of  Dr. 
Jones,  there  is  nothing  to  connect  the  insurgent  chiefs  or  their  sol- 
diers with  this  outrage.  "Was  it  wonderful,  if  the  murderous  exploits 
of  Sir  Charles  Coote  and  Sir  William  St.  Leger  had  already  reached 
Cavan,  and  inflamed  to  fury  the  popular  mind  ?  Yet,  even  the  men 
who  plundered  the  fugitives,  abstained  from  further  violence.  "Some 
were  killed,"  says  Dr.  Jones.  Of  course  the  men  thus  set  upon  re- 
sisted, and  murderous  weapons  were  used.  But  the  "some"  would 
not  have  failed  to  be  "many,"  had  any  but  the  merest  "few"  perished 
in  the  mclce.  As  to  outrages  of  another  nature,  they  are  not  so  much 
as  hinted  at  by  tlie  narrator,  from  his  first  page  to  his  last.  If  we 
place  the  manifold  causes  of  resentment  and  revenge  by  the  side  of 
what  occurred  at  Belturbet,  we  shall  pause  before  we  accuse  a  whole 
people  of  inhumanity  for  the  acts  of  a  rabble  every  one  of  whom  was 
still  smarting  under  the  memory  of  some  wrong.  But  where  can  we 
find  1,500  unarmed  and  defenceless  men,  women  and  children  of  the 
odious  race  and  creed  of  the  Insurgents,  and  ]3laced  at  the  mercy, — 
I  do  not  say  of  an  English  rabble, — but  of  the  soldiery  of  Sir  Charles 


Protestant  Blsliojjs  and  Clergymen  protected  in  C'avan.       307 

Coote,  or  Sir  William  St.  Leger,  or  Lord  Forbes,  or  even  the  Earl  of 
Ormonde,. — who  would  have  suffered  as  little  from  the  brutal 
and  ferocious  passions  let  loose  and  encouraged  by  these  com- 
manders ? 

It  is  one  feature  of  this  last  desperate  struggle  of  the  Irish  for  all 
that  they  held  most  dear, — that  the  honor  of  woman  was  safe  wher- 
ever their  standard  waved.  Can  their  enemies  make  such  boast  as 
this?  .  .  .     But  we  abstain. 

The  author  of  the  "Cromwellian  Conquest,"  who  refers  to  origi- 
nal documents  for  every  one  of  his  statements,  and  gives  them 
generally  in  the  very  words  of  the  original,  thus  speaks  of  the  insur- 
rection in  Cavan  : 

"In  the  county  Cavan  there  were  no  murders.  Bishop  Bedel 
of  Kilmore  remained  in  his  palace  unharmed,  his  flocks  untouched, 
surrounded  by  crowds  of  English  that  had  fled  thither  as  to  a  Y>ost  of 
safety,  and  lay  in  his  barns  and  stables,  and  even  on  the  hay  in  the 
churchyard.  Thither  fled  the  Bishop  of  Elphin  and  a  train  of  Ros- 
common exiles,  and  there  he  enjoyed  such  a  heaven  upon  earth  for 
three  weeks,  that  he  would  willingly  have  endured  another  Irish 
stripping  to  enjoy  again  >such  holy  converse.  For  the  Irish  never 
hindered  these  two  Bishops  and  their  poor  flocks  from  using  their 
religious  exercises,  though  their  02vn  was  made  a  crime;  and  seven 
priests,  reprieved  hy  the  King,  were  hanged  at  this  time,  at  the  angry 
demand  of  the  House  of  Commons,  simply  for  saying  Mass.  In 
November,  an  Irish  priest  arrived  at  Bishop  Bedel's,  to  conduct  them 
to  Dublin.  The  Bishop  of  Elphin  and  the  rest  departed,  leaving 
Bedel  and  his  family  behind,  who,  with  holy  courage,  resolved  to 
stay.  Bedel  died  there  in  February,  164:3,  and  the  Irish  paid  liim 
honor  by  firing  over  his  grave.  His  family  continued  there  unmo- 
lested till  15th  June,  1642,  when  they  joined  a  party  of  1,340  English, 
that  by  treaty  with  the  Irish  were  escorted  safely  to  Sir  Henry  Tich- 
borne's  garrison  at  Drogheda.  Of  the  Bishop  of  Elphin's  company 
not  one  miscarried,  nor  was  a  thread  of  the  garments  that  Bedel  gave 
the  stript  English  touched  by  the  rebels  on  their  way,  which  the 


308  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Bishop  attributed  to  Bedel's  parting  blessing,*  not  to  the  fidelity  and 
care  of  their  gnide,  or  the  humanity  of  the  people."  f 

The  very  first  act  of  the  assembled  Confederates  at  Kilkenny,  in 
May,  1642,  was  to  draw  up  a  solemn  declaration  of  their  rights,  and 
of  the  rules  to  be  followed  by  all  under  their  authority. 

"We  declare" — they  say — "that  war  openly  Catholic  to  be  lawful 
and  just;  in  which  war  if  some  of  the  Catholics  be  found  to  proceed 
out  of  some  particular  and  unjust  title — covetousness,  cruelty,  re- 
venge or  hatred,  or  any  such  unlawful  private  intentions, — we 
declare  them  therein  grievously  to  sin,  and  therefore  worthy  to  be 
punished  and  refrained  by  ecclesiastical  censures  (if  advised  thereof) 
they  do  not  amend. 

"We  straightly  command  all  our  inferiors,  as  well  churchmen  as 
laymen,  to  make  no  distinction  at  all  between  the  old  and  ancient 
Irish,  and  no  ...  .  comparison  or  differences  between  provinces, 
cities,  towns,  or  families.  .  .  . 

"The  ordinaries  of  every  place,  the  preachers,  confessors,  parish- 
priests,  and  other  churchmen  shall  endeavor  to  see  perfect  peace  and 
charity  between  provinces,  counties,  cities,  and  families,  as  the  obli- 
gation of  this  Union  require th. 

"We  ordain  and  decree  that  all  and  every  such  as  from  the 
beginning  of  this  present  war  have  invaded  the  possessions  of  goods 
as  well  movable  as  immovable  ....  of  any  Irish  Protestant  being  not 
adversary  of  this  cause,  and  do  detain  any  such  goods  shall  be  excom- 
municated, as  by  this  present  decree  we  do  excommunicate  them.  .  . 
And  we  declare  involved  in  this  censure  all  and  every  of  them  who 
directly  or  indirectly  hinder  or  forbid  to  pay  their  due  rents.  .  .  . 

"We  will  and  declare  all  tliose  that  murder,  dismember,  or  griev- 
ously strike; — all  thieves,  unlawful  spoilers,  robbers  of  any  goods, 
extorters,  together  with  all  such  as  favor,  receive,  or  any  ways  assist 


*  "  Letter  of  John  Bishop  of  Elpliin  to  Ormonde,"  dated  4th  May,  1682  {Carte 
Papers,  vol.  39;  Endorsed  by  Ormonde), 
t  "  Cromwellian  Conquest,"  pp.  62,  63. 


Owen  O'Neill's  Principles.  309 

them,  to  be  excommunicated,  and  so  to  remain  until  they  completely 
amend  and  satisfy.  ..." 

As  to  the  military  code  imposed  upon  the  army  itself,  nothing 
could  be  more  admirable,  better  adapted  to  enforce  discipline,  and  to 
prevent  effectually  all  acts  of  violence  or  outrage  on  the  peaceful 
populations. 

The  cruelties  imputed  to  Sir  Phelim  O'Neill  and  his  command  at 
the  opening  of  the  war,  have  never  been  satisfactorily  proven;  and 
until  peremptory  proof  is  given  of  them,  we  are  bound  to  believe  in 
the  sincerity  of  his  proclamations  and  other  public  utterances.  It  ill 
becomes  men  who  palliate  or  excuse  or  even  approve  the  horrible 
cruelties  of  the  Parliamentary  Generals  and  soldiery  to  do  violence  to 
ambiguous  or  uncertain  allegations  in  order  to  convict  of  savage 
cruelty  a  man  who  must  have  prevented  bloodshed  and  outrage 
wherever  he  could. 

As  to  Phelim's  great  kinsman,  Owen  O'Neill,  all  his  recorded 
words  and  acts  prove  the  nobleness,  gentleness,  and  purity  of  pur- 
pose, which  were  the  ground-work  of  his  character.  "My  coming  to 
this  kingdom,"  he  writes  to  Ormonde,  "was  not  to  disturb  it,  but  to 
help  to  give  it  such  peace  as  would  be  for  the  honor  and  satisfaction 
of  his  Majesty  and  the  nation;  and  no  man  living  can  say  that  I  have 
done  anything  contrary  to  this  resolution  since  my  coming.  ...  I 
shall  take  such  course  wherein  no  wrong  shall  be  done  or  violence 
offered  by  those  that  receive  my  command  in  any  of  their  quarters, 
and  if  any  be  done,  I  shall  do  what  lies  in  me  to  see  it  redressed,  as 
far  as  my  power  may  extend." 

In  a  letter  to  Lord  Muskerry  is  a  solemn  statement  of  the  great 
soldier's  principles.  "I  do  protest,  swear,  and  vow  before  Almighty 
God,  that  I  never  harbored  the  least  thought  of  ambition  in  anything 
yet,  but  that  which  I  assuredly  thought  and  imagined  to  redound  to 
the  freedom,  preservation,  and  liberty  of  my  King,  country,  religion, 
and  nation;  and  that  during  the  remainder  of  my  days  no  private 
interest  of  my  own,  neither  love,  hatred,  inducement,  nor  suggestion 
of  any  will  persuade  me  to  the  contrary." 


310  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Next  to  this  illustrious  soldier,  consistent  with  himself  to  the  last, 
was  the  head  of  the  Irish  hierarchy,  the  Archbishop  of  Armagh, 
Hugh  O'Reilly.  He  was,  all  through  this  war  and  the  terrible  years 
which  followed,  the  soul  and  guide  of  the  national  party.  "For- 
bearing all  notice  of  the  cruelties  and  bitter  oppression  which  more 
immediately  instigated  the  insurrection  of  1641  (we  quote  the  words 
of  C.  P.  Meehan),  we  have  only  to  state,  that  Archbishop  O'Reilly, 
like  the  other  members  of  the  Irish  hierarchy,  did  his  utmost  to 
restrain  the  violence  of  the  people,  who  would  have  wreaked  ven- 
geance on  their  persecutors,  had  they  been  left  to  their  own  wild 
instincts,  at  that  momentous  crisis.  With  Sir  Plielim  O'Xeill  and 
Magennis,  Lord  Iveagli,  he  employed  his  great  influence,  urging 
them  to  keep  the  armed  multitudes  in  clieck,  and  to  prevent,  so  far 
as  in  them  lay,  the  massacre  and  pillage  of  Protestants.  Such  sal- 
utary restraint,  enforced  by  the  exhortation  of  the  primate,  produced 
the  most  happy  results;  for  the  northern  chieftains,  and  the  rude 
array  they  commanded  at  the  first  outbreak,  respected  him  too  much 
to  violate   the   lessons   of   forbearance   and   charity   which   he   per- 

severingly    inculcated Borlase,    Temple,    and    others    have 

utterly  ignored  his  interference  on  behalf  of  the  Protestant  colonists, 
who  were  then  wholly  at  the  mercy  of  the  insurgents;  but  we  have 
only  to  repeat  that  the  exaggerations  of  those  writers  would  wear 
some  show  of  truth,  if  O'Reilly  had  not  interposed  his  high  authority 
to  curb  the  fierce  impulses  of  men  grown  desperate  by  reason  of  the 
flagrant  injustice  with  which  they  had  been  treated  by  the  canting 
knaves  and  bigots  who  then  misgoverned  Ireland."* 

Hugh  O'Reilly  conceived — as  the  same  author  informs  us — the 
idea  of  giving  to  the  national  movement,  once  it  had  received  the 
support  of  the  Catholics  of  the  Pale,  the  regular  organization  it 
assumed  at  Kilkenny,  in  May,  1642.  "Devoting  all  his  energies  to 
this  grand  object,  O'Reilly  convened  a  provincial  s}mod  at  Kells  early 
in  March,  1642,  when  the  bishops  declared  that  the  war  undertaken 

*  "  Irish  Hierarchy  in  the  Seventeenth  Century,"  pp.  163-4. 


Division  and  Strife  in  the  Episcopal  body.  311 

by  the  Irish  people,  for  their  king,  religion,  and  country,  was  just 
and  lawful.  In  the  May  following,  he  caused  a  national  synod,  com- 
posed of  prelates  and  lay  lords,  to  meet  at  Kilkenny,  where,  after 
having  ratified  their  former  declaration,  they  framed  an  oath  of  asso- 
ciation, to  be  taken  by  all  their  adherents,  binding  them  to  maintain 
the  fundamental  laws  of  Ireland,  the  free  exercise  of  religion,  and 
true  allegiance  to  Charles  I.  Both  synods  were  attended  by  the 
entire  of  the  Irish  hierarchy,  either  in  person  or  by  proxy,  with  the 
exception  of  Thomas  Dease,  bishop  of  Meath.  ..." 

Happy  had  it  been  for  the  cause  in  which  their  all  and  the  all  of 
Ireland  were  involved,  had  the  Bishop  of  Meath,  and  all  men  of  posi- 
tion and  influence  like  him,  heartily  supported  from  the  beginning 
the  insurgent  commanders.  Unity,  unanimity,  determination,  and 
concentration  of  their  strength  in  one  direction  at  a  time,  would  have 
made  Phelim  O'Xeill  and  his  confederates  masters  of  every  city  and 
stronghold  in  Ireland,  long  before  Owen  O'Neill  had  left  Flanders. 
"When  there  was  division  and  strife  in  the  episcopal  body  as  well  as 
among  the  inferior  clergy,  how  should  there  not  be  dissension  among 
the  nobility,  gentry,  and  the  people  themselves  ?  Everything  in  face 
of  a  powerful  enemy,  who  never  knew  what  it  was  to  renounce  a 
cherished  purpose,  or  to  loosen  their  hold  on  power  or  property 
once  in  their  possession, — depended  on  union  of  minds,  and  unity  of 
action.  The  single  material  weight  of  overwhelming  numbers  should 
have  driven  every  Englishman  out  of  Ireland  from  October  23,  1641, 
to  January  1,  1642. 

And  then,  when  the  inevitable  struggle  came  with  Cromwell, 
backed  by  the  whole  might  and  fanaticism  of  England, — the  contest 
would  not  have  been  so  unequal.  Cruel,  unscrupulous,  unsparing  as 
were  both  this  General  and  his  soldiers, — there  never  could  have 
been  a  massacre  of  Drogheda,  had  there  been  a  united  Ireland,  a 
whole  nation  in  arms  defending  their  altars,  their  homes,  their  coun- 
try, and  their  liberties. 

The  Irish  Catholics  were  sincerely  and  conscientiously  devoted  to 
the  Stuart  Kings.     Much  as  they  had  suffered  from  the  greed,  the 


312  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

hypocrisy,  the  treacliery  of  both  Charles  and  his  father,  the  Irish 
Catholic  heart  remained  faithful  to  the  King  in  his  misfortune,  and 
the  Irish  Catholic  conscience  never  wavered  in  its  allegiance  to  the 
ungrateful  princes,  with  whom  self  was  paramount  to  every  other 
consideration. 

One  of  the  chief  causes  of  division,  defeat,  disaster,  and  final 
destruction  to  the  Confederates  and  the  Catholic  cause,  was  the  pres- 
ence in  Ireland  of  Ormonde, — General-in-Chief  of  the  royal  forces  at 
first,  afterwards  Lord-Lieutenant;  a  man  who  hated  the  Irish  and  the 
Catholic  religion,  whose  whole  aim  was  to  break  up  the  Confederacy, 
though  in  ruining  it  he  also  ruined  the  last  hopes  of  his  royal  master. 
And  scarcely  less  baneful  to  the  national  cause  was  the  presence  in 
the  Confederate  Councils  and  army  of  the  Anglo-Irish  Catholics,  the 
Lords  and  Gentry  of  the  Pale,  to  whom  Dease,  Bishop  of  Meath, 
belonged,  and  whose  whole  force  always  leaned  towards  Ormonde  and 
compromise  with  the  English.  An  impossible  compromise  and  con- 
ciliation, as  we  know  too  well,  and  as  they  must  have  known,  from 
the  actions  and  proclamations  of  the  Lords  Justices,  of  the  entire 
Parliamentary  Party  in  England  as  well  as  in  Ireland. 

There  have  never  been  worse  enemies  of  Ireland  than  men  born 
on  her  own  soil,  whose  affections  and  interests  were  in  England. 


PART   FOURTH. 


CROMWELL. 

No  age  wa.s  spared,  no  .sex,  uay — no  degree; 

Not  infants  in  the  porch  of  life  were  free. 

The  sick,  the  old,  who  could  but  hope  a  day 

Longer  by  Nature's  bounty,  not  let  stay: 

Virgins  and  widows,  matrons,  pregnant  wives. 

All  died.     'Twas  crime  enough  that  they  had  lives, 

— Ben  Jonson. 

XN  the  preceding  chapters  we  have  seen  the  methods  recommended 
by  Edmund  Spenser  to  the  Earl  of  Essex,  for  "  settlmg"  Ulster  and 
Connaught  as  Lord  Grey  de  Wilton  and  Sir  George  Carew  had  set- 
tled Munster.  These  commanders,  aided  by  such  ruthless  sub- 
ordinates as  Spenser  himself,  Walter  Raleigh,  and  Walter's  half- 
brother,  Humphrey  Gilbert,  had  so  heartily  plied  sword,  halter,  and 
fire-brand,  all  through  the  fair  lands  of  the  south,  that  "from  Dun- 
quin  in  Kerry  to  Cashel  in  Tipperary,  there  was  not  heard  the  low- 
ing of  a  cow  or  the  voice  of  a  herdsman."  One  might  think  that  the 
"gentle"  poet  who  penned  the  "Faery  Queene"  felt  his  heart  touched 
with  pity  and  remorse  as  he  described  the  wide-spread  desolation  he 
had  himself  helped  to  make,  the  fearful  massacres  that  had  covered 
the  land  with  nnburied  corpses,  and  the  irremediable  misery  which 
was  the  lot  of  the  few  remaining  sufferers.  "In  one  year  and  a  half" 
— he  says — "they  were  brought  to  such  wretchedness  as  any  stony 
heart  would  have  rued  the  sight.  Out  of  every  corner  of  the  woods 
and  glynns  they  came  forth  on  their  hands — for  their  legs  could  not 

(313) 


314  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

bear  them; — they  looked  hke  anatomies  of  deatli,  and  spoke  like 
ghosts  crying  out  of  the  grave;  they  flocked  to  a  plot  of  water-cresses 
as  to  a  feast,  ....  and  soon  after  scraped  the  very  carcasses  out  of 
the  graves." 

One  sliould  think  that  were  criminals  punished  in  the  life  to 
come,  as  Dante's  immortal  verse  paints  them,  that  Spenser  and  his 
fellow  "desolators"  must  be  seen  everlastingly  amid  a  frightful 
wilderness  covered  with  unburied  dead,  and  hunger-mad  wretches 
sating  their  appetite  on  their  remains; — watching  there  everlastingly, 
maddened  by  a  hunger  fiercer  a  hundred-fold,  seeking  to  share  in  the 
horrid  feast,  and  driven  back  from  the  carrion  by  yonder  crowd; 
seeking  to  appease  the  thirst  which  fires  their  brain  in  yonder  pool 
of  blood,  and  repelled  from  it  by  the  ever-reflected  images  of  their 
victims. 

Edmund  Spenser's  "stony  heart"  rued  not  on  earth  the  deso- 
lation, the  massacres,  and  the  woe  unfathomable  of  which  he  and  his 
fellows  were  the  authors.  He  only  draws  this  terrible  picture  to 
show  both  Irish  Lord-Lieutenants  and  an  English  Queen  how  Ireland 
could  be  conquered  and  the  Irish  race  effectually  "extirpated." 

Well,  his  fellow-soldier  and  Patron,  Mountjoy,  profited  well  by 
this  teaching,  as  Ulster  bore  witness  in  the  last  years  of  "Good  Queen 
Bess."  But  it  was  reserved  for  Cromwell  to  apply,  in  its  perfection, 
the  scheme  of  conquest  and  anglification  sketched  by  Spenser. 

That  condition  of  the  public  mind  in  England,  which  permitted 
and  authorized  the  barbarities  of  CromAvell  and  his  army,  and  which 
impelled  the  nation  to  aid  him  in  his  work  of  extermination  and  carry 
out  in  detail  his  plan  for  the  "Settlement  of  Ireland,"  is  a  phenome- 
non in  the  history  of  religious  aberrations  and  moral  monstrosities. 

Impartial  History  will  trace  back  to  the  Solemn  League  and 
Covenant  the  fierce  spirit  of  hatred  against  Popery  and  the  Idola- 
try attributed  to  the  Papists  the  principal  source  of  that  fanati- 
cism which,  in  the  Three  Kingdoms,  predisposed  the  readers  of  the 
Bible  to  view  the  Irish  Catholics  with  the  murderous  intolerance  of 
the  Hebrew   toward  the   Canaanite,  and   Ireland   itself  as   another 


Lo7'd  Forbes  emulates  Stronghow.  315 

Canaan  from  which  the  idolaters  should  be  extirpated,  root  and 
branch,  to  make  place  for  those  professing  the  tenets  of  the  goodly 
Puritan  creed. 

But  the  private  interests  of  Englishmen  and  Scotchmen  were  as 
ardently  enlisted  in  this  crusade — for  such  it  really  became — as  was 
their  religious  zeal  and  their  national  animosity.  We  have  seen  the 
Propositions  made  to  the  British  Parliament  as  early  as  February 
1642,  and  by  them  accepted,  for  raising  an  army  to  conquer  Ireland, 
and  divide  2,500,000  acres  of  its  best  lands  among  the  men  who 
"adventured"  to  advance  the  money.  The  King  was  simply  per- 
mitted to  sign  the  Act  giving  effect  to  this  contract;  its  execution 
was  entrusted  to  a  Joint  Committee  composed,  one  half,  of  members 
of  the  Commons,  and  one  half,  of  Subscribers  to  the  Fund.  Between 
them  they  named  the  general  and  officers  of  the  proposed  army  of 
conquest.  It  was  to  consist  of  5,000  foot  and  500  horse.  Sir  John 
Whitelock,  the  Speaker  of  the  House,  declared  that  this  expedition 
was  to  put  an  end  to  the  interminable  conflict  of  races  in  Ireland 
foretold  by  Giraldus  Cambrensis,  thus  giving  the  lie  to  the  ancient 
prophesy,  "that  Ireland  would  only  be  conquered  just  before  the  Day 
of  Judgment."  A  pamphlet  published  at  the  time  in  London, — for 
pamphlets  in  that  age  did  the  exciting  and  misleading  work  done  in 
ours  by  the  daily  journals, — set  forth  all  these  reasons,  and  urged 
upon  the  public  attention  the  necessity  and  advantages  of  this  plan  of 
conquest.* 

The  contest  between  King  and  Parliament  detained  in  England 
the  5,000  foot  and  500  horse,  under  the  command  of  Lord  AVharton, 
raised  and  equipped  for  this  purpose.  A  partial  expedition,  however, 
raised  by  the  Adventurers,  sanctioned  by  Parliament,  and  com- 
manded by  Lord  Forbes,  landed  in  Munster,  in  July,  1G42.  They 
were  empowered  to  do  all  the  mischief  they  could,  and  to  hold  and 
possess  whatever  they  got.     Lord  Forbes  gave  a  foretaste  of  Crom- 

*  "  Fidelity,  Valour,  and  Obedience  of  the  English  declared,  and  a  desire  that 
the  present  forces  now  ready  to  bicker  here  in  England,  may  be  turned  against  the 
barbarous  Irish  rebels.     By  Walter  Meredith,  Gent."     Small  4to.  London,  1642. 


316  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

well's  temper,  and  a  specimen  of  what  Lord  Wharton  and  his  army 
were  prepared  to  execute. 

In  Galway  the  Lords  Justices  had  appointed  Sir  Francis  Wil- 
loughby.  Governor.  He  was  just  the  man  to  welcome  Lord  Forbes 
and  allow  him  to  give  vent  to  his  savage  mood.  So  the  Governor 
from  his  fort,  and  Lord  Forbes  from  his  ships,  contrived  and  com- 
bined to  force,  by  sheer  and  gratuitous  cruelty,  the  whole  province 
into  open  insurrection.  The  Earl  of  Clanrickarde,  who  was  doing 
his  utmost  to  maintain  peace,  thus  describes  to  Ormonde  the  doings 
of  the  "noble  pair  of  brothers  in  arms." 

"Scarce  any  day  passes  without  great  complaints  of  both  the  cap- 
tains of  the  fort  and  ship  sallying  out  with  their  soldiers  and 
trumpet,  and  troop  of  horse,  burning  and  breaking  open  houses, 
taking  away  goods,  preying  of  the  cattle,  with  ruin  and  spoil,  rather 
than  supply  to  themselves;  not  only  upon  those  that  are  protected, 
but  upon  them  that  are  most  forward  to  relieve  and  assist  them;  .  .  . 
shooting  his  ordinance  into  the  town  or  threatening  to  do  it;  keeping 
disorderly  sentries  at  every  gate;  abusing  those  that  offer  to  go  out; 
offering  (threatening)  to  take  them  prisoners  to  the  fort,  and  to  exer- 
cise martial  law -upon  them;  killing  and  robbing  poor  people  that 
come  to  market,  burning  their  fisher-boats,  and  not  suffering  them 
to  go  out."  * 

"Whilst  I  was  at  Tirellan,"  he  writes  again,  "in  treaty  with  his 
lordship  (Lord  Forbes),  and  that  my  Lord  President  (Ranelagh)  was 
then  with  him  in  the  fort,  I  could  see  the  country  on  fire,  my  ten- 
ants' goods  and  houses  burnt,  and  four  or  five  poor  innocent  creatures, 
women  and  children,  inhumanly  killed  by  some  of  his  forces.  And 
his  Lordship,  at  his  landing,  having  taken  possession  of  Our  Lady's 
Church  on  the  west  of  Galway,  their  ancient  burial  place,  tliey  did 
not  only  deface  tlie  church  hut  digged  up  the  graves  and  burnt  the 
coffins  and  bones  of  the  dead^  \ 

Forbes  had  done  the  same  in  Munster.     "Forbes  landing  his  men 

*  Carte,  "  Life  of  Ormonde,"  iii.  98.  t  Ibid.,  p.  109. 


Holu  the  Celts  are  to  be  Evangelized.  317 

took  the  Castle  of  Glin,  tlie  ancient  seat  of  I'horaas  Fitzgerald,  com- 
monly known  by  the  name  of  the  Knight  of  the  Valley,  a  gentleman 
who  had  always  assisted  the  English,  and  never  had  appeared  in  the 
rebellion.  Other  officers  often  plundered  all  promiscuously;  but  this 
commander  seems  to  have  picked  out  such  as  continued  in  their  duty, 
to  be  the  objects  of  his  fury  and  avarice.  It  was  indeed  no  impolitic 
course,  if  his  view  was  to  make  the  rebellion  universal;  since  a  dis- 
tinction of  persons  was  certainly  necessary  to  show  them,  that  an 
utter  extirpatlo7i  (which  was  the  table-talk  of  the  Puritan  Party)  was 
not  really  intended."  * 

Of  course,  it  was  the  acknowledged  purpose  of  all  these  men  to 
make  the  rebellion  universal,  in  order  to  have,  before  the  civilized 
world,  some  pretext  for  the  universal  massacre  of  the  Irish  Catholics 
of  both  races.  The  now  historic  orders  given  in  Dublin  by  the  Lord? 
Justices  and  communicated  to  all  military  commanders,  "to  kill, 
burn,  and  destroy," — "to  consume,  demolish,  and  destroy  all  th? 
places  where  the  rebels  were  relieved  or  harbored," — "to  kill,  slay, 
and  destroy  all  the  rebels  and  their  relievers; "  and  to  crown  all  thi? 
bloody  martial  code  came,  on  Feb.  23,  1641-42,  this  horrible  proc-- 
lamation  from  the  Lords  Justices  and  Council. 

"Ordek  to  the  Earl  of  Ormonde. 
''^ By  the  Lords  Justices  and  Council, 

Wm.  Parsons, 

Jo.    BORLACE. 

"The  rebels  having  assembled  themselves  in  arms  in  hostile  man- 
ner, ....  intending  to  starve  this  City  and  this  State,  ....  deprive 
his  Majesty  of  his  crown  and  sovereignty  here,  and  root  out,  murder 
and  destroy  all  the  British  and  Protestants  in  the  Kingdom, 

"It  is  resolved.  That  it  is  fit  that  his  Lordship  do  endeavor  with 
his  Majesty's  forces  to  wound,  kill,  slay,  and  destroy  by  all  the  ways 
and  means  he  may,  all  the  said  rebels  and  their  adherents  and  re- 

*  Carte,  Ibid.,  p.  109. 


318  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

lievers;  and  burn,  spoil,  waste,  consume,  destroy,  and  demolish  all 
the  places,  towns,  and  houses  where  the  said  rebels  are  or  have  been 
relieved  and  harbored,  and  all  the  hay  and  corn  there;  and  kill  and 
destroy  all  the  men  there  inhabiting  able  to  bear  arms. 

"Given  at  his  Majesty's  Castle  of  Dublin,  23d  Feb.,  1641-2. 
E.  Dillon",  F.  Willoughby, 

Tho.  Eotheeam,  J.  Temple, 

Ad.  LoFTUs,  Robert  Meredith."* 

After  perusing  the  decrees  of  the  Synods  of  Kells  and  Kilkenny, 
the  proclamations  of  Phelim  O'Neill,  the  military  code  of  discipline 
imposed  on  the  Confederate  armies,  and  the  Christian  utterances  of 
Owen  O'Xeill, — one  passes  into  another  world,  and  finds  himself 
among  a  different  order  of  beings  in  this  conclave  held  in  Dublin 
Castle, — as  if  it  were  a  conclave  of  fiends  incarnate  decreeing  the 
indiscriminate  slaughter  of  mankind,  and  the  destruction  of  all  that 
is  fairest  and  most  beautiful  on  God's  earth. 

We  know  now  what  spirit  animates  the  Sir  Francis  Willoughby, 
some  of  whose  fiendish  performances  we  have  been  witnessing  in  Gal- 
way.  We  know  where  Sir  John  Temple  imbibed  that  spirit  of  mon- 
strous falsehood  and  calumny  which  afterwards  impelled  him  to  write 
in  England  about  tho  300,000  Protestants  massacred  in  the  first 
months  of  the  rebellion. 

This  was  done  by  Englishmen  in  Ireland. 

But  will  not  the  purer  atmosphere  of  England,  where  the  religion 

of  the  Covenanters  sheds  its  superior  light  on  the  Senate-chamber  and 

the  domestic  hearth,  forbid  our  thinking  that  any  such  sentiments  or 

enactments  as  the  above  could  find  there   their  origin  or    their 

sanction  ? 

Listen  : 

"  Oct.  2i,  1644. 

"An  Ordinance  of  the  Lords  and  Commons  assembled  in  Parlia- 
ment, commanding  that  no  officer  or  soldier  by  sea  or  land,  shall  give 

*  Carte,  Foid.,  p.  61. 


^  These  bloody  Irish,''  forsooth  !  319 

arrf  ^nsfk^.'  X-  >>j  Irishman,  or  to  any  Papist  born  in  Ireland,  which 
shall  be  taken  \n  arms  against  the  Parliament  of  England. 

"The  LordiS  and  Commons  assembled  in  the  Parliament  of  England 
do  declare,  that  no  quarter  shall  be  given  to  any  Irishman,  or  to  any 
Papist  born  in  Ireland,  which  shall  be  taken  in  liostihty  against  the 
Parliament,  either  upon  the  sea,  or  within  this  Kingdom,  or  domin- 
ion of  Wales;  and  therefore  do  order  and  ordain  that  the  Lord  Gen- 
eral, Lord  Admiral,  and  all  other  officers  and  commanders,  both  by 
sea  and  land,  shall  except  all  Irishmen,  and  all  Papists  born  in  Ire- 
land, out  of  all  capitulations  and  agreements,  and  compositions  here- 
after to  be  made  with  the  enemy;  and  shall,  upon  the  taking  of  every 
such  Irishman  or  Papist  born  in  Ireland  as  aforesaid,  forthwith  ]jut 
every  such  jjerson  to  death. 

"  And  it  is  f nrther  ordered  and  ordaineJ.,  that  the  Lord  General, 
the  Lord  Admiral,  and  the  committees  of  the  several  counties,  do 
give  speedy  notice  hereof  to  all  subordinate  officers  and  commanders 
by  sea  and  land  respectively;  who  are  hereby  required  to  use  their 
utmost  care  and  circumspection,  that  this  Ordinance  be  duly  exe- 
cuted; and  lastly,  the  Lords  and  Commons  do  declare,  that  every 
officer  and  commander  by  sea  or  land,  that  shall  be  remiss  or  negli- 
gent in  observing  the  tenor  of  this  Ordinance,  shall  be  reputed  a 
favorer  of  the  bloody  rebellion  of  Ireland,  and  shall  be  liable  to  such 
condign  punishment  as  the  justice  of  both  Houses  of  Parliament  shall 
inflict  upon  him."* 

"The  bloody  rebellion  of  Ireland,"  indeed  !  Let  the  impartial 
reader  judge,  after  what  has  here  been  said,  on  which  side  rests  the 
stain  and  guilt  of  bloodshed  without  motive  or  measure, — on  the 
Irish  "rebels"  in  arms  for  their  King,  their  religion,  their  country, 
— or  on  the  Parliamentary  "rebels"  in  arms  against  the  King,  and 
against  the  dearest  and  most  sacred  rights  of  their  own  fellow- 
citizens. 

"We  have  seen  with  what  kindness  the  Protestant  Bishops  of  Kil- 

*  Rushworth's  Historical  Collection,  vol.  v.,  p.  783.    London  Ed.,  1692. 


320  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

more  and  Elphin  were  treated  by  tlie  O'Keillys  in  Cavan,  and  liowtlie 
Bishop  of  Elphin  witli  about  1,400  persons  Avere  safely  conducted  and 
escorted  to  Dublin  and  other  cities  of  the  Pale,  "nor  was  a  thread  of 
the  garments  that  Bedel  gave  the  stript  English  touched  by  the 
rebels  on  their  way."  This  was  a  signal  proof  of  the  efficacy  of 
Phelim  O'Neill's  instructions  to  the  subordinate  commanders;  and  a 
still  more  touching  evidence  of  the  Christian  counsels  given  by  Hugh 
O'Reilly,  Archbishop  of  Armagh,  to  his  own  kinsmen  in  arms. 

Wherever  the  family  of  the  noble  Archbishop  commanded,  not 
only  Protestant  bishops,  ministers,  and  people  were  safe,  but  they 
were  protected  in  the  exercise  of  their  own  religious  worship.  When 
Bishop  Bedel  died  the  O'Eeilly's  attended  his  funeral  with  a  guard 
of  honor,  and  had  a  salute  fired  over  his  grave.  As  the  war  for  Ire- 
land progressed,  and  when  Owen  O'lsTeill  was  appointed  General  of 
the  Confederate  forces  in  the  North,  his  great  kinsman,  who  loved 
him  dearly,  encouraged  him  to  make  the  strife  a  blameless  one,  un- 
stained by  the  inhumanity  which  was  the  law  with  his  opponents. 

With  this '  gentleness  toward  the  English  settlers  in  Ulster,  com- 
pare these  two  facts  related  by  men  bitterly  hostile  to  the  Confederate 
cause  and  religion. 

While  the  Lords  Justices  Parsons  and  Borlase  were  negotiating 
with  the  English  Parliament  for  the  re-conquest  and  final  "settlement " 
of  Ireland,  they  were  successfully  driving  the  English  Catholics  of  the 
Pale  into  open  insurrection,  and  exasperating  by  wholesale  burnings 
and  massacres  the  entire  Irish  population. 

Sir  Charles  Coote,  their  Avilling  instrument  in  all  their  bloody 
raids  around  Dublin,  was  also  appointed  governor  of  Dublin  and 
provost-marshal. 

Here  is  what  Carte  sa3^s  of  him,  while  fulfilling  this  double  office: 

"It  was  certainly  a  miserable  spectacle  to  see  every  day  numbers 
of  persons  executed  by  martial  law,  at  the  discretion  or  rather  caprice 
of  Sir  Charles  Coote,  a  hot-headed  and  bloody  man,  and  as  such 
accounted  by  the  English  and  Protestants.  Yet  this  was  the  man 
whom  the  Lords  Justices  picked  out  to  entrust  with  a  commission  of 


Murder  of  Fathers  Higgins  and   White.  321 

Martial  Law,  to  put  to  death  rebels  or  traitors,  i.  e.,  all  such  as  he 
should  deem  to  be  so;  which  he  performed  with  delight  and  a  wanton 
kind  of  cruelty.  And  yet  all  this  while  the  Justices  sat  frequently  in 
Council,  and  the  Judges  in  their  usual  seasons  sat  in  their  resj^ective 
courts,  spectators  of,  and  countenancing,  so  extravagant  a  tribunal  as 
Sir  C.  Coote's,  and  so  illegal  an  execution  of  justice."  * 

Now  for  a  specimen  of  this  justice,  in  the  first  of  the  two  cases 
alluded  to: 

"The  cruelties  of  the  martial  law  under  Sir  Charles  Coote  have 
been  already  mentioned,"  says  Warner.  "But  about  this  time,  when 
it  was  thought  politic  to  discourage  the  submissions  (of  the  insur- 
gents), which  were  growing  frequent,  Father  Higgins,  a  very  quiet, 
pious,  and  inoffensive  man,  who  had  put  himself  under  the  protec- 
tion of  Lord  Ormonde,  and  whom  his  lordship  had  brought  with  him 
to  Dublin,  was  one  morning  seized;  and  without  any  trial  or  delay, 
or  giving  his  lordship  any  notice  of  the  intention,  by  Sir  C.  Coote's 
order  hanged.  Father  Higgins  officiated  as  a  priest  at  Naas  and  m 
that  neighborhood ;  had  distinguished  himself  greatly  by  saving  the 
English  in  those  parts  from  spoil  and  slaughter;  and  had  relieved 
several  whom  he  found  had  been  stripped  and  plundered;  so  far  was 
he  from  engaging  in  the  rebellion,  or  giving  any  encouragement  to 
it.  .  .  .  Their  hanging  a  man  of  character  at  all,  deserving  in  many 
respects,  and  exceptionable  in  none  ])ut  liis  religion,  inclines  one  to 
think  that  they  intended  this  war  to  be  understood  to  be  a  war  of 
religion."  f 

Here  is  the  second  example: 

Borlase  informs  us  that  "the  soldiers  were  grown  so  implacable  to 
the  Irish,  as  they  could  scarce  endure  any  ordinary  Papist,  much  less 
suffer  a  rebel  to  be  admitted  amongst  them."  X 

"The  case  of  a  priest  of  the  name  of  White,  chaplain  of  the  Count- 
ess of  Westmeath,  strongly  illustrates  this  insatiable  ra,ge  for  blood 

*  Carte,  "  Life  of  Ormonde,"  vol.  i.,  279. 

t  Rev.  Fernando  Warner,  "  Hist,  of  the  Rebellion,"  p.  182. 

X  "  Hist,  of  the  Execrable  Irish  Rebellion,"  p.  70. 

21 


322  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

and  slaughter.  The  Marquis  of  Ormonde,  with  all  his  power,  as 
commander-in-chief  of  the  army,  was  unable  to  save  the  life  of  this 
unfortunate  clergyman,  against  whom  no  crime  was  alleged  but  his 
clerical  character.  He  had  surrendered  himself  to  the  Marquis,  who 
had  given  him  a  protection.  But  having  ventured  from  the  Count- 
ess's house,  he  was  seized,  and  though  Ormonde  strove  to  save  him, 
even  only  to  take  him  to  Dublin  for  trial,  it  was  in  vain.  A  mutiny 
took  place,  and  the  Marquis  was  obliged  to  abandon  him,  to  sate  the 
rage  of  an  infuriated  soldiery,  by  whom  he  was  immolated  on  the 
altar  of  fanaticism  and  national  rancor."  * 

"The  Irish  writers,"  says  the  author  last  quoted,  "accuse  Sir 
Charles  Coote  of  issuing  orders  to  the  butchering  parties  he  sent  out 
in  every  direction  '  not  to  spare  the  least  cliild  tlioucjli  but  a  span 
long.'  f  This  charge  is  corroborated  by  the  following  statement  of 
the  Eev.  Dr.  Nalson: 

'' '  I  have  heard  a  relation  of  my  own,  who  was  captain  in  that 
service,  relate,  that  no  manner  of  compassion  or  discrimination  was 
showed  either  to  age  or  sex;  but  that  the  little  children  were  pro- 
miscuously sufferers  with  the  guilty;  and  if  any  Avho  had  some  grains 
of  compassion  reprehended  the  soldiers  for  this  unchristian  inhuman- 
ity, they  would  scoffingly  reply,  WJty  f  Nits  will  he  lice.  And  so 
would  dispatch  them.'"  X 

We  have  seen  above  the  sanguinary  orders  of  the  Lords  Justices, 
commanding  indiscriminate  slaughter  and  ruthless  devastation. 
Leland  assures  us  that  "in  the  execution  of  these  orders,  the  Lords 
Justices  declare  that  the  soldiers  slew  all  persons  promiscuously,  not 
sparing  the  women,  and  sometimes  not  the  children."  § 

It  is  most  painful  to  have  to  dwell  on  these  horrors;  still  the  par- 
tial mention  of  them  is  necessary  both  to  establish  the  unquestioned 
truth  of  the  barbarities  committed  in  the  name  of  England,  of  re- 


*  Vindicke  Hibernicce,  p.  413. 

f  "  Ireland's  Case  Bi-iefly  Stated,"  p.  43. 

i  Nalson,  "  Collection  of  the  Great  Affairs  of  State,"  ii.,  Intro.,  p.  vii. 

§  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  iii.,  p.  198. 


General  Massacre  of  Irish  Papists  in  Scotch  Prisons.         323 

ligion,  and  civilization,  and  the  glorious  fact  that  they  were  all  on 
one  side. 

While  Charles  I.  and  Ormonde,  his  lieutenant  in  Ireland,  were 
most  anxious  to  conclude  a  peace  Avitli  the  Confederates,  the  Parlia- 
mentary Party  in  both  countries  were  equally  busy  in  frustrating  all 
hopes  of  a  peace.  We  have  seen  the  Ordinance  of  the  English  Par- 
liament forbidding  to  give  any  quarter  to  any  Irishman  or  any  Pa|)ist 
born  in  Ireland,  either  on  sea  or  on  land. 

It  was  faithfully  carried  out  both  in  the  spirit  and  in  the  letter. 
Thus,  in  May,  1644,  Captain  Swanley  captured  at  sea  a  detachment 
of  one  hundred  and  fifty  men  sent  over  to  England  by  Ormonde  for 
the  King's  service.  Seventy  of  these  happening  to  be  Irishmen,  or 
Papists  born  in  Ireland,  were  tied  back  to  back  and  thrown  over- 
board. For  this  heroic  achievement  of  the  Puritan  chivalry  Swanley 
was  thanked  by  Parliament  and  ordered  to  be  presented  with  a  chain 
of  gold  worth  £200.  The  London  Times  did  not  then  exist  to  give 
voice  to  English  public  opinion  upon  such  brave  feats  as  this.  But, 
says  Mr.  Prendergast,  "The  London  papers  made  merry  upon  it,  say- 
ing, '  Captain  Swanley  made  those  who  would  not  take  the  Covenant, 
take  the  water  with  their  heads  downwards;  ....  he  made  trial  if  an 
Irish  Cavalier  could  swim  without  hands.'"  *  A  Colonel  Mytton  did 
the  same  with  another  detachment  of  Ormonde's  soldiers. 

"The  Parliament  of  Scotland,  in  1644,  had  passed  a  similar  or- 
dinance against  quarter,  by  agreement  with  the  Parliament  of  Eng- 
land. Accordingly  after  the  defeat  of  Montrose  at  Philiphaugh,  in 
1G49,  the  Scottish  Parliament  'ordained'  that  all  Irish  soldiers  and 
their  followers  in  the  several  prisons  of  Selkirk,  Jedburgh,  Glasgow, 
Dunbarton,  and  Perth  should  be  executed  without  any  assize  or  pro- 
cess, 'conform  to  the  treaty  betwixt  both  kingdoms  passed  in  Act.' 
In  one  day,  eighty  women  and  children,  some  being  infants  at  the 
mother's  breast,  were  cast  over  a  high  bridge,  and  in  this  way  de- 
stroyed,  only  for    being  the  wives  and  children  of  Irish  soldiers. 

*  See  Mercurius  Anlicus  for  May,  1644.    4to.  Loudon. 


324  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

But  tliis  was  no  murder,  for  it  was  '  conform '  to  law.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  was  murder  for  the  Irish  troops  attacking  a  castle  to  have 
killed  any  of  the  garrison,  if  they  did  not  happen  to  be  in  the  pay  of 
the  State."* 

Are  we  reading  the  History  of  the  French  Eevolution?  of  the 
"  massacres  of  September  ?  "  or  of  les  noyades  de  NaJites  ?  Did  the 
ferocious  Carriere  take  for  his  models  Swanley  and  Mytton  ?  Did 
the  Paris  ^eptemhriseurs  tear  a  leaf  from  the  records  of  these  super- 
civilized  Scotch  ? 

Dui'ing  the  war,  and  after  the  war,  it  was  accounted  murder  to 
have  been  in  any  way  accessory  to  the  death  of  any  one  man  of  the 
Parliamentary  Forces,  whether  on  the  battle-field  or  in  any  other 
mode  of  warfare. 

"The  Act  of  Oblivion,  passed  by  the  English  Parliament  in  16G0, 
covered  all  the  acts  of  the  Protestants  of  Ireland,  but  none  ever 
passed  for  the  Irish,  though  expressly  promised.  So  that  acts  of  war 
are  to  this  day  counted  against  the  Irish  as  murders,  while  massacres 
by  the  English  or  Scotch  are  suppressed.  Thus  Newry  surrendered 
to  Marshal  Conway  and  General  Munro,  the  commanders  of  the  joint 
English  and  Scottish  armies,  on  4th  May,  1G42,  on  quarter  for  life. 
Yet  forty  of  the  townsmen  were  put  to  death  next  day  on  the  bridge, 
and  amongst  them  'two  of  the  Pope's  Pedlars'  (so  they  called  two 
seminary  priests);  and  the  Scotch  soldiers,  finding  a  crowd  of  Irish 
women  and  children  hiding  under  the  bridge,  took  some  eighteen  of 
the  women  and  stript  them  naked,  and  tiirew  them  into  the  river 
and  drowned  them,  shooting  them  in  the  water;  and  more  had 
suffered  so,  but  that  Sir  James  Turner,  in  command  under  General 
Monro,  galloped  up  and  stopped  his  men.  They  were  only  copying, 
he  says,  the  cruel  example  set  them  by  the  English  under  Conway's 
command.  If  it  was  intended  to  terrify  the  Irish,  he  adds,  it  failed; 
for  in  revenge  they  put  some  ministers,  prisoners  in  their  hands,  to 
death."  \ 

*  "  Cromwellian  Settlement,"  pp.  67,  68. 

+  Sir  J.  Turner,  "  Memoirs,"  reprint  at  Edinburgh,  1829. 


Sir  Henry  Tichhorne  in  Drogheda.  325 

Miinro,  who  had  not  met  Owen  O'jSTeill  at  Benburb,  seems  to  have 
faithfully  copied  the  example  set  him  by  the  English  commanders. 
He  made  up  the  strongest  army  that  had  been  seen  in  Ireland  during 
the  war;  .  .  .  advanced  with  it  into  Cavan.  from  whence  he  sent 
parties  into  Westmeath  and  Longford,  which  burnt  the  country,  and 
put  to  the  sword  all  the  country  people  that  they  met."  * 

One  more  instance  will  conclude  this  preliminary  narrative.  Sir 
Henry  Tichborne  was  governor  of  Drogheda  for  the  Parliament  (or 
rather  for  the  King  nominally).  He  was  a  brave  and  skilful  officer; 
but  his  soul,  cast  in  the  fiery  fanaticism  of  the  party,  was  as  pitiless 
as  that  of  Cromwell  himself.  During  the  fatal  hesitations  and  delays 
which  marked  the  movements  of  the  Confederates  in  the  first  stage 
of  the  insurrection,  he  employed  or  amused  himself  in  desolating  the 
country  around  Drogheda,  and  kept  his  wife  constantly  edified  by  a 
minute  account  of  his  doings.  "Finding  that  they  (the  rebels)  did 
not  put  themselves  in  arms,"  he  writes,  "and  would  no  more  now 
than  formerly  forsake  their  strength,  to  draw  into  equality  of  ground, 
notwithstanding  their  advantage  of  numbers,  I  concluded  they  were 
in  another  sort  to  be  dealt  with;  and  from  thenceforth,  for  the  most 
part,  I  fell  every  other  morning  into  their  quarters,  and  continued 
these  visitations  for  several  weeks  together,  tvitli  tlie  slaughter  of 
every  man  of  them,  especially  the  new  plantation  in  the  county  of 
Monaghan,  and  at  the  taking  of  Harry  O'Neale's  house,  in  the  Fews; 
insomuch  that  by  this  course  and  the  like  acted  by  the  garrison  at 
Drogheda,  there  was  neither  man  nor  beast  to  be  found  in  sixteen 
miles,  between  the  towns  of  Drogheda  and  Dundalk,  .  .  .  nearer 
than  Carrick  Mac-Cross,  a  strong  pile,  twelve  miles  distant."  f 

Thus  for  twelve  miles  on  one  side  of  Drogheda  and  sixteen  miles 
on  the  other, — a  circle  of  twenty-eight  miles  in  diameter, — the 
slaughter  and  destruction  were  so  complete,  that  neither  man  nor 
beast  was  left!     And   this  apostle  of  English  civilization,  with  his 

*   Carte,  "  Life  of  Orraond,"  ii.,  p.  2. 

t  "  Lettre  of  Sir  H.  Tit-hbonrne  on  tLe  Siege  of  Fredagh,"  in  Appendix  to 
Temple's  Hist.,  p.  186.     Dublin,  1724. 


326  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

hands  reeking  with  the  blood  of  men,  women,  and  children  massacred 
in  their  homes,  day  after  day,  would  sit  down  to  write  to  his  wife  in 
England  a  detailed  account  of  these  fiendish  performances,  as  of 
some  glorious  exploits  the  recital  of  which  might  fire  his  sons'  souls  to 

a  noble  emulation 

Tichborue's  account  of  his  taking  of  Dundalk,  in  the  same  letter 
to  his  wife,  throws  further  light  on  the  murderous  spirit  dis- 
played by  the  English  officers  and  soldiery.  After  driving  out 
the  insurgents  under  Plielim  O'Neill,  he  drew  up  liis  troops 
in  the  market-place,  "caused  the  quarter-masters  to  divide  the 
town  into  quarters,  proportionable  to  the  companies  of  horse  and 
foot;  and  what  booty  was  in  any  quarter  (lie  says),  that  I  left  to  the 
officers  and  soldiers  that  were  quartered  in  it,  by  a  proportionable 
dividend  amongst  them,  whereby  the  confusion  and  contention  about 
pillaging  was  taken  away,  and  I  had  the  soldiers  in  readiness  to 
answer  the  rebels'  motion  and  attempts,  who  rumored  great  words, 
and  still  swarmed  very  thick  in  those  parts.  The  number  of  the  slain 
Hooked  not  (fter,  hut  there  was  little  mercy  shown  in  those  times."* 
■  Another  writer  supplies  us  with  a  detail  which  finishes  off  the 
picture  of  desolation  and  horror  within  this  circle.  "By  the 
death  of  so  many  men  about  us"  —  says  Bernard  the  Protestant 
Dean  of  Ardagli — "having  their  houses  and  all  their  provision 
either  burnt  or  drawn  hither,  the  dogs  only  surviving,  are 
found  very  usually  (like  that  judgment  of  Jezebel  for  the  murder  of 
Naboth)  feeding  upon  their  masters;  which  taste  of  man's  flesh, 
made  it  very  dangerous  for  the  passengers  in  the  roads  who  have  been 
often  set  upon  by  those  mastiffs,  till  we  were  as  careful  to  kill  them 
also. "  f 

On  reading  the  comments  of  these  Eeverend  Ministers  of  a 
Gospel  of  Peace  and  Brotherly  Love,  one  would  be  inclined  to  believe 
that  all  the  suffering,  the  oppression,  the  victims  of  whole  centuries 

*  "  Lettre  of  Sir  H.  Tichbourne,"  &c.,  in  App.  to  Temple's  Hist.,  p.  186. 
+  Nicholas  Bernard,  "  Whole  Proceedings  of  Siege  of  Drogheda  "  (Dublin,  1736), 
p.  105. 


Appear,  then,  0  Cromwell!  327 

of  wrong,  were  on  the  side  of  Sir  Henry  Tichborne  and  Sir  Charles 
Coote, — so  grim  is  the  satisfaction  with  wliich  this  Dean  of  Ardagh 
contemplated  that  wasted  country  covered  with  smoking  ruins,  un- 
buried  corpses,  and  the  dogs  preying  first  on  the  dead  bodies  of  their 
masters,  and  then  attacking,  in  their  rabid  hunger,  the  living  who 
ventured  through  that  hell  upon  earth.  "  We  were  as  careful  to  kill 
them  also"!  They  had  "for  several  weeks  together"  made  daily 
battues,  hunting  down  and  slaughtering  every  human  creature  found, 
and  now  their  care  must  be  to  hunt  down  and  kill  the  dogs  who  had 
fed  and  grown  mad  on  the  flesh  of  the  slain.  And  then  to  quote  the 
judgment  of  Jezebel ! 

The  spirit  which  stirred  up  men, — two  Christian  nations,  the 
English  and  Scottish,— to  wage  a  war  of  Utter  Extermination" 
against  a  neighboring  people,  and  that  under  the  motive  of  advancing 
the  cause  of  pure  religion, — has  become  incarnate  in  Oliver  Crom- 
well. The  public  opinion  which  had  been  growing,  growing  through- 
out England,  and  inflaming  all  men's  minds  and  hearts  against  the 
"Irish  Enemy,"  the  "Papist  Irish," — was  fitly  and  elegantly  expressed 
in  the  celebrated  pamphlet  of  "The  Simple  Cobler  of  Agga warn,  in 
America."  This  was  published  in  1647.  It  is  headed  "A  Word  of 
Ireland  :  Not  of  the  Nation  universally,  nor  of  any  man  in  it,  that 
hath  so  much  as  one  haire  of  Christianity  or  Humanity  growing  on 
his  head  or  in  his  beard, — but  only  of  the  truculent  Cut-throats 
(i.  e.,  the  Irish  Papists),  and  such  as  sliall  take  up  arms  in  their 
defence." 

The  following  passage  contains  the  purpose  of  the  writer: 
"I  beg  upon  my  hands  and  knees  that  the  Expedition  against 
them  may  be  undertaken  while  the  hearts  and  hands  of  our  soldiers 
are  hot.  .  .  .  Happy  is  he  that  shall  reward  them  as  they  have 
served  us:  and  mirsed  he  lie  that  shall  do  that  loorh  of  the  Lord 
negligently !  Cursed  be  he  that  holdeth  back  his  sword  from 
blood  ! "  * 

*  London,  Printed  by  J.  D.  &  R.  I.  for  Stephen  Bowtell,  at   the  sign  of  the 
Bible,  in  Pope's-Head  Alley,  1617. 


328  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

This  work,  like  some  of  tlie  Eecords  of  1793  we  have  seen  in 
French  Municipalities,  seems  to  have  been  written  in  blood,  in  the 
warm  life-blood  of  some  of  the  hated  Papists  butchered  with  such 
impunity  in  1647  as  well  as  the  preceding  years.  There  was  then  in 
England,  as  in  France  in  1793,  a  fearful  epidemic  of  moral  intoxica- 
tion. The  morbid  fear  and  hatred  of  Prelacy  and  Popery,  mingled 
Vv'ith  the  national  detestation  of  the  Irish,  had  inspired  a  thirst  for 
blood.  In  the  masses,  fanaticized  and  maddened  by  the  incessant 
declamations  of  the  Eoundhead  preachers,  there  was  the  firm  convic- 
tion that  it  was  the  worJc  of  God  to  exterminate  every  man,  woman, 
and  child  born  on  Irish  soil  of  Catholic  parents. 

What  was  a  fanatical  belief  in  the  ignorant  masses,  was  used  as  a 
mighty  force,  ready  at  hand,  by  the  clever  and  hypocritical  leaders, 
to  further  their  own  darling  scheme — tlie  Replantation  of  Ireland, 

"They  preach,  they  fast,  they  pray,  they  have  nothing  more  fre- 
quent than  the  sentences  of  Sacred  Scripture,  the  name  of  God  and 
of  Christ  in  their  mouths;  you  shall  scarce  speak  to  Cromwell  about 
anything,  but  he  will  lay  his  hand  on  his  breast,  elevate  his  eyes,  and 
call  God  to  record;  he  will  weep,  howl,  and  repent,  even  Avhile  he 
doth  smite  you  under  the  left  rib," 

So  w^as  he  painted  in  London  in  1C49  by  some  of  his  own  follow- 
ers,* As  he  was  leaving  the  English  shore,  "There  was  much  seek- 
ing of  God  by  prayer  for  a  blessing  upon  them,  and  the  country 
people  prayed  heartily  for  a  fair  wind  for  them,"  Cromwell's  Chap- 
lain, Hugh  Peters,  was  in  command  of  the  twenty-three  ships  that 
formed  the  rear  division  of  the  fleet.  He  was  in  thorough  sympathy 
with  his  master;  and,  minister  of  the  Gospel  as  he  was,  never  once 
held  back  that  master's  sword  from  the  slaughter  of  the  unarmed  and 
defenceless,  as  well  as  of  the  enemy  who  surrendered. 

The  heart  of  the  nation  went  with  Cromwell  to  the  Irish  shore. 

Immediately  after  his  arrival  in  Dublin  he  issued  a  proclamation 
against  "profane  swearing,   cursing,   and  drunkenness."     The  next 

*  "  The  Hunting  of  the  Foxes  .  .  .  directed  to  all  the  Free  Commons  in  Eng- 
land, by  five  small  beadles,  late  of  the  Annie."     London,  1619. 


Cromwell  shotvs  his  Hand.  329 

day,  the  24tli  of  August,  he  issued  another  proclamation  strictly  for- 
bidding his  officers  and  soldiers  from  exercising  cruelty  toward  the 
country-folk,  as  well  as  robbing,  pillage,  &c.  All  the  farmers  are 
invited  to  bring  their  provisions  to  the  army,  where  they  shall  have 
the  benefit  of  a  free  market,  and  be  paid  in  ready  money. 

It  was  a  good  piece  of  strategy;  for  it  secured  him  ample  supplies 
before  entering  on  his  first  campaign.  He  showed  himself  a  true 
Koundhead,  however,  during  his  brief  stay  in  Dublin,  permitting 
his  chaplain  and  officers  to  appear  in  the  Dublin  pulpits  in  their 
"buff  coats";  and  outraged  the  feelings  of  the  Churchmen  by  mak- 
ing of  St.  Patrick's  Cathedral  a  stable  for  his  troopers'  horses. 


The  Drogheda  Tragedy. 

He  began  his  march  to  Drogheda  on  Sept.  1st.  The  garrison  was 
composed  of  2,541  men,  infantry  and  cavalry,  nearly  all  of  whom 
were  Irish.  Tliey  were  but  poorly  supplied  with  ammunition  and 
provisions,  and  were  in  no  way  to  withstand  successfully  Cromwell's 
15,000  chosen  men,  admirably  equipped  and  well  provided  with 
everything.  On  Tuesday,  Sept.  10th,  Drogheda  was  taken  by  storm. 
The  tragedy  is  briefly  told  by  Carte  : 

"The  assault  Avas  given,  and  his  (Cromwell's)  men  twice  repulsed; 
but  in  the  third  attack.  Colonel  Wall  being  unhappily  killed  at  the 
head  of  his  regiment,  his  men  were  so  dismayed  thereby,  as  to  listen 
to  the  enemy  offering  them  quarter;  admitting  them  upon  these 
terras,  and  thereby  betraying  themselves  and  their  fellow-soldiers  to 
the  slaughter.  All  the  officers  and  soldiers  of  Cromwell's  army 
promised  quarter  to  such  as  would  lay  down  their  arms,  and  per- 
formed it  as  long  as  any  place  held  out,  which  encouraged  others  to 
yield.  But  when  they  had  once  all  in  their  power,  and  feared  no 
hurt  that  could  be  done  them,  Cromwell,  being  told  by  Colonel 
Jones  that  he  had  now  all  the  flower  of  the  Irish  army  in  his  hands, 
gave  orders  that  no  quarter  sliould  be  given;  so  that  his  soldiers  were 
forced,  many  of  them  against  their  will,  to  kill  their  prisoners.     The 


330  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

brave  governor,  Sir  Arthur  Aston,  Sir  Edmund  Verney,  the  Colonels 
....  were  killed  in  cold  blood. "  * 

Some  four  officers  escaped  by  a  sort  of  miracle.  "Except  these 
and  some  few  others  who  during  the  assault  escaped  at  the  other  side 
of  the  town,  and  others,  who,  mingling  with  the  rebels  as  their  own 
men,  disguised  themselves  so  as  not  to  be  discovered, — there  was  not 
an  officer,  soldier,  or  religious  person  belonging  to  that  garrison  left 
alive."  t 

An  English  officer  in  Cromwell's  victorious  army,  Thomas  a  Wood, 
brother  to  Anthony,  historian  of  Oxford,  has  left  a  description  of  the 
massacre,  so  far  as  he  was  an  eye-witness  and  actor. 

"He  returned," — says  Anthony, — "from  Ireland  to  Oxford  for  a 
time  to  take  up  the  arrears  of  his  studentship  at  Christ  Church.  It 
was  the  winter  after  the  siege.  At  which  time,  being  often  with  his 
mother  and  brethren,  he  would  tell  them  of  the  terrible  assaulting 
and  storming  of  Drogheda,  wherein  he  himself  had  been  engaged. 
He  told  them  that  three  thousand  at  least,  beside  some  women  and 
children,  were,  after  the  assailants  had  taken  part  (of  the  town),  and 
afterwards  all  the  town,  put  to  the  sword,  on  the  lltli  and  12th  of 
September,  1649.  At  which  time  Sir  Arthur  Aston,  the  governor, 
had  his  brains  beat  out,  and  his  body  hacked  to  pieces.  He  told 
them  that  when  the  soldiers  were  to  make  their  way  up  to  the  lofts 
and  galleries  in  the  church,  and  up  to  the  tower  where  the  enemy  had 
fled,  each  of  the  assailants  would  take  up  a  child,  and  use  it  as  a 
buckler  of  defence  when  they  ascended  the  steps,  to  keep  themselves 
from  being  shot  or  brained.  After  they  had  killed  all  in  the  church, 
they  went  into  the  vaults  underneath,  where  all  the  flower  and 
choicest  of  the  women  and  ladies  had  hid  themselves.  One  of  these, 
a  most  handsome  virgin,  arrayed  in  costly  and  gorgeous  apparel, 
kneeled  down  to  Thomas  a  Wood,  with  tears  and  prayers,  to  save  her 
life;  and  being  struck  with  a  profound  pity,  he  took  her  under  his 
arm,  and  went  with  her  out  of  the  church,  intending  to  put  her  over 

*  Carte,  "  Life  of  Ormonde,"  ii.  84. 

t  P.  W.  Denis  Murphy,  "  Cromwell  in  Ireland,"  p.  103. 


Cromimll  speaks.  331 

tlie  works  to  shift  for  herself.  But  a  soldier,  perceiving  his  inten- 
tions, ran  his  sword  through  her  body.  Whereupon  a  Wood,  seeing 
her  gasping,  took  away  her  money  and  Jewels,  and  flung  her  down 
over  the  works." 

This  scene  was  enacted  in  the  church  of  St.  Peter's. 

"It  is  remarkable,"  says  Cromwell,  "that  these  people,  at  the 
first,  set  up  the  Mass  in  some  places  of  the  town  that  had  been  mon- 
asteries, and  afterwards  grew  so  insolent,  that  the  last  Lord's  Day 
before  the  storm  the  Protestants  were  thrust  out  of  the  great  church 
called  St.  Peter's,  and  they  had  public  Mass  there,  and  in  this  very 
place  near  1,000  of  them  were  put  to  the  sword,  fleeing  thither  for 
safety." 

"Sir, — It  has  pleased  God  to  bless  our  endeavors  at  Drogheda.  .  .  . 
I  believe  we  put  to  the  sword  the  whole  number  of  defendants.  I 
do  not  think  thirty  of  the  whole  number  escaped  v/ith  their  lives: 
those  that  did  are  in  safe  custody, /or  the  Barbadoes.  .  .  .  This  hath 
been  a  marvellous  great  mercy.  ...  I  do  not  believe,  neither  do  I 
hear,  that  any  officer  escaped  with  his  life,  save  only  one  lieutenant. 
The  enemy  were  filled  upon  this  with  much  terror:  and  truly  I 
believe  this  bitterness  will  save  much  effusion  of  blood,  through  the 
goodness  of  God. 

"  I  wish  that  all  honest  hearts  may  give  the  glory  of  this  to  God 
alone,  to  whom  indeed  the  praise  of  this  mercy  belongs,  for  instru- 
ments they  were  very  inconsiderable  the  work  throughout."* 

Thus  spoke  the  Master;  now  for  the  Chaplain,  Peters  : 

"The  truth  is,  Drogheda  is  taken,  3,552  of  the  enemy  slain,  and 
sixty-four  of  ours.  Colonel  Castle  and  Colonel  Symonds  of  note. 
Aston,  the  governor,  killed — none  spared.  We  have  also  Trim  and 
Dundalk,  and  are  marching  to  Kilkenny.  I  came  now  from  giving 
thanks  in  the  great  church  (Christ  Church,  Dublin)." 

The  false-hearted  Ormonde  to  his  King,  Charles  II. : 

"It  is  not  to  be  imagined  the  terror  that  these  successes  and  the 
power  of  the  rebels  (i.e.,  the  Parliamentarians  under  Cromwell)  have 
*  Whitelock,  "  Memorials  of  English  Affairs,"  p.  428. 


332  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

struck  into  the  people.  They  are  so  stupefied,  that  it  is  with  great 
difficulty  I  can  persuade  them  to  act  anything  like  men  towards  their 
own."* 

"The  people  "  of  whom  Ormonde  writes  are,  not  the  Irish  under 
Owen  Roe  O'Neill,  but  the  English  of  the  Pale,  whom  this  prince  of 
intriguers  had  succeeded  in  detaching  from  Hugh  O'Reilly,  Arch- 
bishop of  Armagh,  and  the  Nuncio,  Rinuccini.  When  union  had 
been  strength  and  salvation,  Ormonde  had  effected  division.  And 
this  is  the  man  who  neglected  to  send  timely  succors  to  Drogheda, 
while  he  had  under  his  command  3,000  unemployed  troops. 

Ormonde,  seeing  how  little  he  could  rely  upon  the  Gentlemen  of 
the  Pale  and  their  followers,  had  addressed  himself  to  Owen  O'Neill, 
and  this  great  man,  mindful  only  of  his  country's  need  and  of  the 
absolute  urgency  of  uniting  against  the  most  terrible  foe  Ireland  had 
yet  beheld,  hastened  to  take  steps  for  joining  his  forces  to  Ormonde's. 
But  while  these  negotiations  were  still  in  progress,  poison,  which  had 
so  often  rid  English  generals  of  their  most  formidable  Irish  ad- 
versaries, was  once  more  employed,  and  successfully,  against  tlie  Ulster 
Chieftain. 

He  felt  the  first  effects  of  the  poison  in  the  middle  of  August. 
He  battled  with  it  a  long  time,  but  in  vain.  Then  he  followed  liis 
army  on  its  march  southwards,  borne  in  a  litter.  Finding  his  end 
near,  he  desired  to  be  taken  to  Cloughouter,  the  residence  of  Mael- 
mora  O'Reilly,  his  brother-in-law,  where  Archbishop  Hugh  consoled 
him  in  his  last  moments. 

"Many  of  his  clansmen  did  not  believe  that  he  could  die  at  a  time 
when  he  was  so  much  needed,  '  some  deeming  that  God  in  His  clem- 
ency would  not  deal  so  strait  with  this  poor  nation  as  to  bereave  them 
of  this  their  only  champion;  but  rather,  the  world  being  unworthy  of 
so  good  a  master-piece,  lulled  him  to  sleep  and  snatched  him  away  to 
some  secret  corner  of  the  world,  as  another  Elias,  to  keep  him  there 
for  future  better  purposes. ' "  f 


*  Carte,  "  Collection  of  Papers,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  398. 

+  "  Aphorismical  Discovery  of  Faction,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  63. 


The  City  betrayed  hy  James  Stafford.  333 

Cromwell  now  had  no  enemy  in  Ireland  he  need  fear  either  on  the 
battle-field,  or  behind  the  walls  of  a  fortress. 

The  Tragedy  of  Wexford. 

The  Parliamentary  Lord  Lieutenant  was  too  experienced  and  too 
good  a  soldier  to  neglect  the  opportunity  which  the  terrible  fate  of 
the  Drogheda  Garrison  had  created  for  him.  Dundalk  and  Trim  had 
surrendered  without  striking  a  blow.  The  death  of  Owen  O'Neill 
left  no  adversary  in  the  North  worthy  of  a  single  week's  campaign. 
He  marched  southward,  therefore;  and  on  the  29th  September,  the 
Parliamentary  fleet  appeared  off  the  harbor  of  Wexford,  Cromwell 
with  his  army  encamping  before  its  walls  on  October  1st. 

The  Wexford  people,  unprepared  as  they  were  to  resist  this 
double  attack  by  sea  and  land,  declined  the  help  sent  them  by 
Ormonde.  Had  he  not  surrendered  Dublin  to  the  Parliament?  Had 
he  not  been  the  bane  of  the  Irish  cause  throughout  ?  So  these  stout- 
hearted burgesses  of  Wexford  chose  to  die  bravely,  trusting  to  God 
and  their  own  resolute  spirit.  Cromwell  had  traitors  within  the 
walls,  who  kept  him  fully  advised  of  the  desperate  plight  to  which 
the  citizens  were  reduced.  To  color  his  determination  to  deal  with 
Wexford  as  he  had  dealt  with  Drogheda  he  amused  the  Commander, 
Synnott,  with  false  hopes  of  a  fair  capitulation,  meanwhile  pressing 
the  attack  on  every  side.  Ormonde  found  means  of  throwing  several 
detachments  into  the  place.  To  the  propositions  of  the  Commander, 
Cromwell,  on  October  11th,  offered  his  ultimatum:  To  the  soldiers, 
quarter  and  liberty;  to  the  officers,  quarter,  but  not  liberty;  to  the 
citizens,  freedom  from  pillage,  with  one  hour  to  deliberate. 

They  refused. 

"While  I  was  preparing  the  answer  to  the  propositions,"  says 
Cromwell,  "studying  to  preserve  the  town  from  plunder,  that  it 
might  be  of  more  use  to  you  and  your  army,  the  Captain,  who  Avas 
one  of  the  Commissioners,  being  fairly  treated,  yielded  up  the  Castle 
unto  us." 

The  traitor  was  Captain   James  Stafford.     With  this  infamous 


334  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

wretcli  and  some  others  within  the  town  who  resembled  him,  Crom- 
well had  so  cleverly  carried  on  his  correspondence,  that  he  viewed 
with  grim  satisfaction  the  detachments  of  foot  and  horse  sent  to  the 
succor  of  the  besieged.  They  were  all  prey  that  fell  into  his  net,  and 
destined  to  certain  destruction. 

No  sooner  Avas  Cromwell  master  of  the  Castle,  which  dominated 
the  walls  of  the  place,  than  the  gates  were  thrown  open  and  the 
whole  of  the  besieging  army  poured  in.  The  townsfolk  in  con- 
sternation abandoned  the  fortifications  and  fled  into  the  interior, 
while  their  enemies  scaled  the  walls.  In  vain  such  as  had  not  lost 
their  head  among  the  former  placed  chains  across  the  street  to  stop 
the  advance  of  cavalry.  These  were  obstacles  soon  overcome,  and 
only  irritated  the  fell  spirit  of  the  assailants.  The  citizens  abandon- 
ing their  houses  crowded  together  in  the  market-place,  whither  their 
defenders  were  soon  driven  after  them. 

Let  Cromwell  himself  tell  the  rest. 

"When  they  were  come  into  the  market-place,  making  a  stiff 
resistance,  our  forces  broke  them,  and  then  put  all  to  the  sword  that 
came  in  their  way.  Two  boatfuls  of  the  enemy,  attempting  to 
escape,  being  overprest  with  numbers,  sank,  whereby  w^ere  drowned 
near  three  hundred  of  them.  I  believe,  in  all,  not  less  than  two 
thousand;  and  I  believe  not  twenty  of  yours  from  first  to  last  of  the 
siege.  And  indeed  it  hath,  not  without  cause,  been  deeply  set  upon 
our  hearts,  that  we  intending  better  to  this  place  than  so  great  a 
ruin,  hoping  the  town  might  be  of  more  use  to  you  and  your  army, 
— yet  God  would  not  have  it  so;  but  by  an  unexpected  providence,  in 
his  righteous  justice,  brought  a  just  judgment  upon  them  to  become 
a  prey  to  the  soldier." 

He  then  quotes,  as  a  justification  for  his  butchery  of  the  defence- 
less multitude,  two  instances  of  cruelty  practised  by  the  Wexford 
Catholics  upon  Protestants.  His  "as  some  say,"  only  indicates  all  too 
plainly  that  he  was  glad  to  seize  upon  any  of  the  dreadful  stories  set 
afloat  by  such  men  as  Sir  John  Temple  and  Borlase,  for  the  express 
purpose  of  inflaming  the  popular  passions  against  the  Irish  Catholics. 


The  Slauglder  described  by  Cromwell  and  Others.  335 

The  cruelties  could  not  have  been  committed  in  the  first  months  of 
the  insurrection;  for  it  did  not  reach  Munster  till  the  middle  or  the 
end  of  December;  and  no  such  cruelty  is  charged  upon  the  Wexford 
people  at  that  time  by  any  known  author.  After  the  Synods  of 
Kells  and  Kilkenny,  and  the  strict  injunctions  of  both  the  civil  and 
ecclesiastical  authorities,  the  commission  of  such  cruelties  is  highly 
improbable. 

Who  will  believe  Cromwell,  calumniating  his  hecatombs  of  in- 
nocent victims,  while  his  hands  are  still  dripping  with  their  blood? 

"The  town  is  now  in  your  power  (he  continues,  addressing  the 
Parliament),  that  of  the  former  inhabitants  /  believe  scarce  one  in 
twenty  can  challenge  any  property  in  their  houses.  Most  of  them  are 
run  away,  and  many  of  them  killed  in  this  service.  And  it  were  to 
be  wished  that  an  honest  people  would  come  and  plant  here.  .  .  . 

"Thus  it  hath  pleased  God  to  give  into  your  hands  this  mercy."* 

From  Dr.  Nicholas  French,  Bishop  of  Ferns,  the  faithful  shep- 
herd of  this  stricken  flock,  we  have  the  following  authentic  ac- 
count: 

"On  that  fatal  day,  Oct.  11th,  1649,  I  lost  every  thing  I  had. 
Wexford,  my  native  town,  then  abounding  in  merchandise,  ships, 
and  wealth,  was  taken  at  the  sword's  point  by  that  plague  of 
England,  Cromwell,  and  sacked  by  an  infuriated  soldiery.  Before 
God's  altar  fell  sacred  victims,  holy  priests  of  the  Lord.  Of  those 
who  were  seized  outside  the  church,  some  were  scourged,  some 
thrown  into  chains  and  imprisoned,  while  others  were  hanged  or  put 
to  death  by  cruel  tortures.  The  blood  of  the  noblest  of  our  citizens 
was  shed  so  that  it  inundated  the  streets.     There  was  hardly  a  house 

that   was   not   defiled   with   carnage   and  filled   with  wailing 

Never  since  that  day  have  I  seen  my  native  city,  my  flock,  the  land 
of  my  birth,  or  my  kindred.  I  am  become  the  most  unhappy  of 
men.  After  the  destruction  of  the  city  I  lived  for  five  months  in  the 
woods,  every  moment  sought  after  that  I  might  be  put  to  death 

*  Domestic  State  Papers  (1649-50),  p.  366. 


336  Th&  Cause  of  Ireland. 

On  one  occasion  I  did  not  taste  food  for  five  entire  days.  I  slept 
under  tlie  open  sky,  without  shelter  or  covering."* 

In  another  letter.  Dr.  French  writes:  "...  The  rumor  of  the 
direful  massacre  reached  me  whilst  I  was  ill  in  a  neighboring  town, 
sufferiiig  from  a  burning  fever.  I  cried,  and  mourned,  and  wept 
bitter  tears;  and  turning  to  Heaven,  cried  out  in  the  words  of 
Jeremias,  while  all  who  were  present  shared  in  my  grief.  .  .  .  From 
that  time,  ...  I  sought  refuge  in  the  wilderness.  ...  In  the  woods 
and  groves  I  passed  more  than  five  months,  that  thus  I  might  admin- 
ister some  consolation  to  the  few  survivors  of  my  flock.  .  .  .  But 
neither  woods  nor  caverns  could  afford  me  a  lasting  refuge.  For  the 
heretical  Governor  of  Wexford,  George  Cooke,  well  known  for  his 
barbarity,  with  troops  of  cavalry  and  foot  soldiers,  pursued  me  to 
death  everywhere,  seai'ching  mountain  tops  and  deepest  recesses.  He 
burned  the  huts  and  houses  near  the  wood  in  which  I  had  offered  the 
Holv  Sacrifice.  .  .  .  But  God  protected  me  in  the  midst  of  all  these 
perils,  and  delivered  me  from  this  blood-thirsty  man." 

AVhile  the  garrison  and  the  unarmed  citizens  were  falling  beneath 
the  swords  of  the  fanatical  soldiery,  some  three  hundred  women 
flocked  in  terror  around  the  great  Cross  in  the  Public  Square.  This 
only  secured  and  hastened  their  destruction.  The  Eoundheads  took 
the  kneeling  throng  for  a  crowd  of  idolaters,  worshipping  an  image 
of  stone,  and  slaughtered  them  without  mercy. 

He  found  them  there, — the  young,  the  old,  the  maiden  and  the  wife; 

Their  guardians  brave  in  death  were  cold,  who  dared  for  them  the  strife. 

They  prayed  for  mercy — God  on  high!  before  Thy  Cross  they  prayed, 

And  ruthless  Cromwell  bade  them  die  to  glut  the  Saxon  blade. 

Three  hundred  fell — the  stifled  prayer  was  quenched  in  women's  blood; 

Nor  youth  nor  age  could  move  to  spare  from  slaughter's  crimson  flood. 

But  nations  keep  a  stern  account  of  deeds  that  tyrants  do! 

And  guiltless  blood  to  Heaven  will  mount,  and  Heaven  avenge  it  too!  + 

Lingard,  who  relates  this  terrible  slaughter,  also  informs  us  that 
after  the  battle  of  Xaseby,  one  hundred  women,  some  of  them  ladies 
of  rank,   were  slain  without  pity,  simply  because  they  were  Irish 

*  "  Cromwell  in  Ireland,"  pp.  162,  163.  +  One  of  the  Poet  Barry's  gems. 


The  Bible  and  the  Sword  in  Ireland.  337 

Catholics.  But  such  was  the  spirit  inculcated  by  the  Covenanters, 
and  fostered  by  the  innumerable  publications  typified  in  the  appeal  to 
bloodshed  of  the  "Simple  Cobbler  of  Aggawam." 

We  pass  over  the  other  successes  of  Cromwell  and  his  lieutenants 
in  Ireland:  the  revolt  of  the  Munster  Garrisons;  the  heroic  defence 
of  Waterford,  and  the  still  more  heroic  defence  of  Clonmell,  where 
the  name  of  Hugh  O'Neill  shone  for  the  last  time  with  such  tran- 
scendent lustre;  the  treason  of  the  townsmen  of  Kilkenny,  and  the 
bravery  of  its  garrison;  and  all  the  unavailing  devotion  of  its  Celtic 
people,  weakened  by  their  fatal  alliance  with  Ormonde  and  his 
Royalists. 

Then  loomed  up  the  bands  of  heroic  defenders  of  a  country  given 
over  to  destruction,  flocking  to  the  sea-shore  and  seeking  to  pass  to 
the  Continent  to  serve  some  Catholic  King;  and  those  other  bands  of 
strong  men  and  women,  of  young  maidens,  of  boys  and  girls,  hunted 
down,  kidnapped,  carried  on  board  ship,  and  sold  into  servitude  in 
Barbadoes,  the  West  Indies,  the  New  England  settlements,  Virginia, 
and  the  Carolinas. 

Meanwhile  slaughter  and  desolation  reigned  throughout  the  land. 

"It  was  confidently  averred  that  Sir  John  Clotworthy,  who  well 
knew  the  designs  of  the  faction  that  governed  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons of  England,  had  declared  there  in  a  speech,  '  that  the  conversion 
of  the  Papists  in  Ireland  was  only  to  be  effected^  by  the  Bible  in  one 
hand  and  the  sioord  in  tlie  other;  and  j\Ir.  Pym  gave  out  that  he 
would  not  leave  a  priest  in  Ireland.  To  the  like  effect  Sir  William 
Parsons,  out  of  a  strange  weakness  or  a  detestable  policy,  positively 
asserted  before  many  Avitnesses  at  a  public  entertainment  in  Dublin, 
that  within  a  twelvemonth  wo  Catholic  should  be  seen  in  Ireland."* 

How  this  Scheme  2vas  Carried  Out. 
Hear  the  Protestant  author  of  the  "Cromwellian  Settlement  of 
Ireland": 

"It  may  seem  strange  to  hear  counted  as  military  weapons  issued 

*  Carte,  "  Life  of  Ormonde,"  vol,  i.,  235. 
23 


338  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

from  the  store  at  Waterford,  among  swords,  pikes,  powder,  shot,  ban- 
daleers  and  match,  '  eighteen  dozen  of  scythes  with  handles  and  rings, 
forty  reape  hooks,  and  whetstones  and  rubstones  proportional ';  but 
with  these  the  soldiers  cut  down  the  growing  crop,  in  order  to  starve 
the  Irish  into  submission. 

"Not  less  strange  is  it  to  hear  of  the  Bible  being  served  out  of 
store,  with  their  other  ammunition,  to  the  army.  Yet  we  find  Bibles 
issued  on  3d  August,  1652,  by  the  Commissary  of  Stores  to  the  sev- 
eral companies  of  foot  and  troops  of  horse  within  the  precinct  of 
Dublin,  according  to  muster,  one  Bible  to  every  file;  and  on  the  17th 
of  the  same  month,  one  hundred  Bibles  for  the  use  of  the  forces 
within  the  precinct  of  Galway,  for  the  propagation  of  the  Gospel;  and 
the  several  Commissaries  of  Musters  Avere  to  see  the  Bibles  regularly 
mustered  and  accounted  for  by  the  officer  commanding  each  troop 
and  company.  Thus  realizing  literally  Sir  John  Clotworthy's  dec- 
laration, made  a  few  years  before,  that  religion  must  be  propagated  in 
Ireland  with  the  Bible  in  one  hand  and  the  sword  in  the  other. 
For 

Here,  in  the  saddle  of  one  steed 

The  Saracen  and  Christian  rid  ; 

Was  tree  of  every  spiritual  order 

To  preach  and  fight,  and  pray  and  murder. 

And  truly  they  had  no  bloodier  instrument  than  the  Bible  in  all  their 
arsenal  of  war."  * 

One  little  extract  from  a  letter  of  the  too-famous  Eichard  Boyle, 
Earl  of  Cork,  written  August  25tli,  1642,  will  enable  us  to  form  a 
conception  of  the  extent  to  which  the  Exterminators,  from  the  first 
months  of  the  Insurrection,  carried  out  their  well  laid  scheme  in 
divers  parts  of  the  Kingdom.  Ki chard  Boyle,  the  life-long  associate 
of  such  men  as  the  Lords  Justices  Parsons  and  Borlase,  and  the  very 
head  in  Ireland  of  the  Puritans  or  Covenanters,  brought  up  his  sons, 
the  Lords  Broghill  and  Kynalmeaky,  in  the  strictest  principles  of 
Puritanism.  We  have  seen,  in  the  preceding  chapter,  with  what  zeal 
both  father  and  sons  pursued  the  Catholic  nobility  and  gentry  of 

*  "  Cromwellian  Settlement,"  pp.  77,  78. 


IncMquin's  Sanguinary  Achievements.  339 

Munster,  and  liow  cleverly  tliey  managed  to  have  juries  of  their  own 
packing  find  true  bills  of  attainder  against  some  1,400  or  1,500  pro- 
prietors at  a  time.  Of  course  these  men  powerfully  aided  The  Lord 
President  St.  Leger  in  driving  the  Catholics  of  the  South  into  open 
insurrection. 

Well,  ten  months  after  the  insurrection  began,  Lord  Cork  thus 
wrote:  "I  do  affirm,  and  will  make  good  this  undeniable  truth,  that 
my  two  sons,  Kynalmeaky  and  Broghill,  with  those  forces  that  I  have 
raised  and  satisfied,  and  they  command,  have  been  the  destruction  of 
above  three  thousand  rebels,  since  the  beginning  of  the  insurrec- 
tion." * 

The  Earl  of  Barrymore,  whose  name  we  mentioned  in  connection 
with  the  exploits  of  this  family  of  Boyles,  is  also  brought  in  by  the 
same  correspondence  for  a  share  in  the  work  of  slaughter  worthy  of 
his  share  in  the  work  of  confiscation:  this  Earl  was  poor  and  the 
Boyles  were  helping  liim  to  acquire  estates  and  wealth  by  the  same 
means  they  had  acquired  and  were  increasing  theirs.  "The  Earl  of 
Barrymore  hath  nothing  but  what  he  fighteth  with  the  rebels  for, 
and  getteth  by  his  sword;  he  having  lately  ha.nged  forty-three  notable 
rebels  for  a  breakfast. "  f 

Borlase,  in  his  history  of  the  "Execrable  Irish  Rebellion,"  relates 
how  Sir  William  Cole,  with  one  regiment  of  500  men,  and  one  troop 
of  horse,  slew  2,147  swordsmen  in  various  skirmishes  and  battles,  and 
to  have  "starved  and  famished  of  the  vulgar  sort"  no  less  than  "7,000 
persons,"  whose  property  they  had  previously  plundered. 

Inchiquin, — the  representative  of  the  O'Briens,  but  a  bitter  hater 
of  all  Catholics, — wasted  with  fire  and  sword  the  whole  of  Munster, 
"burning,  plundering,  and  destroying  the  country,  even  to  the  gates 
of  Limerick."  In  storming  the  Rock  of  Cashel,  he  massacred 
"twenty  ecclesiastics,"  says  Wright.  The  troops  had  entered  the 
city  without  resistance,  and  feasted  on  the  abundant  fare  they  found. 
The  next  day,  the   14th  Sept.,   1647,   they  prepared  to  storm  the 

*  "  State  Letters  of  the  Earl  of  Orrery,"  vol.  i.,  p.  15.  +  Ibid. 


340  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Eock.  They  offered  the  Garrison  liberty  to  march  out  with  the 
honors  of  war;  but  the  city  was  to  be  left  to  their  discretion.  This 
proposition  could  not  be  entertained.  The  Rock  was  assaulted  and 
carried,  and  the  defenders  forced  to  take  refuge  in  the  Cathedral. 
No  mercy  was  shown  to  soldier  or  civilian;  to  priests,  women,  or 
children.  The  sacred  edifice  was  filled  with  corpses  up  to  the  altar 
steps  and  the  altar  itself.  At  the  battle  of  Knocknenoss,  where  the 
brave  Colkitto  perished,  "The  left  commanded  by  Mac  Allisdrum 
(Colkitto),  consisting  of  brave  northern  Irish,  stood  their  ground; 
but  were  at  last  forced  to  yield  to  the  conquerors,  their  commander 
giving  up  his  sword  to  Colonel  Purden.  But  Lord  Inchiquin  having, 
before  the  battle,  ordered  that  no  quarter  should  be  given  to  the 
enemy,  the  brave  Mac  Allisdrum  and  most  of  his  men  were  put  to 
the  sword  in  cold  blood.  .  .  .  There  were  4,000  Irish  killed  on  the 
spot."  * 

Whitelock  says  of  his  exploits  in  Leinster:  "Inchiquin  commits 
great  destruction,  as  far  as  he  dares  venture,  about  Dublin  and 
Tredah,  by  burning  and  driving  away  of  their  cattle,  hangs  all  he 
can  meet  with  going  to  the  Lord  Lieutenant."  f 

Of  Sir  Charles  Coote's  massacres  and  desolations,  we  need  say 
nothing  more.  He  is  reported  as  saying  with  his  latest  breath  : 
"Blood  !     Blood  !     More  blood  !  " 

We  end  by  Ireton,  Cromwell's  successor  in  Ireland. 

He  was,  according  to  Heath,;);  "absolutely  the  best  prayer-maker 
and  preacher  in  the  army,  though  Oliver  came  little  behind  him." 

"Soon  after  Ireton  had  the  command  of  the  army,  he  was 
informed  that  a  certain  Barony  had  broken  the  articles  in  considera- 
tion of  which  they  (i.e.,  its  inhabitants)  had  been  protected.  He 
marched  therefore  against  this  Barony,  and  gave  immediate  ordei'S  to 
his  soldiers  to  kill  man,  woman,  and  child;  but  before  these  orders 
were  executed.  Lord  Broghill  expostulated  with  him  upon  the  cruelty 

*  Smith,  "Ancient  and  Present  State  of  the  County  of  Cork,"  ii.,  162. 
t  "  Memorials,"  &c. 
X  Heath,  Flagellum. 


Massacre  in  the  Cathedral  of  Cashel.  341 

of  such  proceedings He  (Broghill)  was  humbly  of  opinion,  that 

it  would  be  more  just,  reasonable,  and  honorable,  to  order  the 
soldiers  to  kill  none  but  who  were  found  in  arms  or  made  any  oppo- 
sition. AVith  these  words  Ireton  was  at  last,  though  hardly,  per- 
suaded to  revoke  his  bloody  commands."* 

The  Cathedral  of  Cashel,  which  was  the  scene  of  the  awful  dese- 
cration by  Inchiquin,  on  Sept.  14,  1647,  was  now  doomed  to  witness 
a  still  more  fearful  massacre  at  the  hands  of  Ireton.  "Having 
brought  together  an  army,  he  marched  into  the  county  of  Tipperary, 
and  hearing  that  many  priests  and  gentry  about  Cashel  had  retired 
with  their  goods  into  the  Church,  he  stormed  it,  and  being  entered, 
put  three  thousand  of  them  to  the  sword,  taking  the  priests  even 
from  under  the  altar."  f 

Ireton  did  his  work  heartily,  thoroughly.  The  Bibles  were 
served  out  diligently  to  each  company  of  foot  and  troop  of  horse;  and 
the  Sword,  in  the  language  of  the  "Simple  Cobbler  of  Aggawam"  was 
made,  all  over  the  land,  starh  drunk  with  Irish  blood.  It  had  real- 
ized the  fervent  wish  of  the  pious  Cobbler,  and  made  of  Irish  corpses 
of  men,  women,  and  children  "heaps  upon  heaps,  and  their  country 
a  dwelling  place  for  Dragons,  an  astonishment  to  the  Nations." 

The  Desolation. 
"On  the  1st  January,  1651-2,  the  Parliament  (so  the  Commission- 
ers report)  had  in  Ireland  an  army  of  30,000  men.  But  they  had 
350  garrisons  and  military  posts  to  maintain,  and  100  more  to  plant; 
while  the  Irish  had  an  equal  number  of  men,  all  of  them,  except 
those  in  their  towns  and  garrisons  in  Connaught,  in  woods,  bogs,  and 
other  fastnesses  of  the  greatest  advantage  to  them,  and  from  which 
there  was  no  dislodging  them.  ...  To  place  garrisons  near  their 
fastnesses,  to  lay  waste  the  adjacent  country,  allowing  none  to  inhabit 
there  on  pain  of  death,  was  the  course  taken  to  subdue  the  Irish. 


*  Orrery,  "  State  Letters,"  i.  32,  33. 

t  "  Memoirs  of  Edward  Ludlow,"  i,  106. 


342  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

The  consequence  was  that  the  countby  was  keduced  to  a  howl- 
ing WILDERNESS. 

"In  liis  circuitous  march  from  Limerick,  in  November,  1650, — a 
distance,  lie  says,  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  Irish  miles, — Ireton  passed 
through  a  district  of  thirty  miles  together,  with  hardly  a  house  or 
any  living  creature  to  be  seen,  only  ruins  and  desolation  in  a  plain 
and  pleasant  land. 

"Three  fourths  of  the  stock  of  cattle  were  destroyed.  In  1653, 
cattle  had  to  be  imported  from  Wales  into  Dublin;  it  required  license 
to  kill  a  lamb.  Mrs.  Alice  Bulkeley,  widow,  on  17th  March,  1652, 
'  in  consideration  of  her  ould  age  and  weakness  of  body,'  was  licensed 
to  kill  and  dress,  notwithstanding  the  Declaration  of  the  Commis- 
sioners for  the  Affairs  of  Ireland,  so  much  lamb  as  should  be  neces- 
sary for  her  own  use  and  eating,  not  exceeding  three  lambs  for  that 
whole  year.  Tillage  had  ceased;  the  English  themselves  were  near 
starving.  .  .  . 

"It  became  important,  therefore,  to  come  to  terms  with  the  Irish. 
The  Commissioners  for  Ireland  reported  that  the  natives  were  of 
opinion  that  the  Parliament  intended  them  no  mercy."  * 

And  they  were  to  have  no  mercy. 

Sir  William  Petty — the  Surveyor-General — calmly  tells  us  that 
since  October,  1641,  up  to  May,  1652,  more  than  500,000  natives  of 
Ireland  had  perished. 

Exile  and  Bondage. 
On  May  12,  1652,  the  Irish  army  in  Leinster  surrendered.  The 
con<litions  on  which  they  laid  down  their  arms  were  successively 
adopted  by  the  other  Irish  forces  in  Connaught  and  Ulster,  so  that  in 
September  of  that  year,  the  war  for  liberty  was  over.  The  Kilkenny 
articles  stipulated  that  all  who  were  not  guilty  of  the  first  blood 
should  be  received  into  protection;  and  that  all  who  should  be  un- 
willing to  accept  the  future  dispositions  of  Parliament  in  their  regard, 

*  "  The  Cromwellian  Settlement,"  p.  79. 


Women  and  Clnldreji  sold  into  Slavery.  343 

would  be  permitted  to  treat  with  the  Government  for  means  to  mi- 
grate to  foreign  countries. 

Both  the  Government  and  the  Adventurers  and  Planters  were  de- 
sirous of  getting  rid  of  every  single  Irishman,  of  those  who  had  borne 
arms,  particularly.  The  noblemen,  and  officers  high  in  command  in 
the  late  Confederate  army,  were  allowed  to  establish  recruiting  cen- 
tres all  over  the  island,  for  tlie  purpose  of  enlisting  men  for  Con- 
tinental armies.  Between  1651  and  1054,  34,000  men  left  Ireland  for 
ever  to  serve  the  Kings  of  France,  Poland,  Spain,  and  the  Emperor 
of  Germany. 

The  Parliamentary  Eecords  contain  a  Letter  from  Athlone,  dated 
April  12,  1652,  and  informing  the  Government  of  the  surrender  of 
one  of  the  few  fragments  of  the  Irish  army  left  in  the  West.  "The 
garrison  of  Roscommon  Castle,"  it  says,  "yielded  upon  that  which  we 
adjudged  moderate  terms  amongst  us,  which  is,  for  the  Government 
to  transport  a  regiment  for  Spain,  ivlwre  we  could  wish  the  ivhole 
nation."  * 

This  was,  undoubtedly,  the  wish  of  all  Protestants  in  the  Three 
Kingdoms  that  not  an  Irish  Papist  should  be  left  in  Ireland. 
AVhither  outside  of  Ireland  the  Irish  should  go,  their  enemies  cared 
not;  they  only  yearned  to  be  rid  of  the  whole  brood. 

I'his  clearing  out  of  the  Celts  was,  in  the  judgment  of  their 
adversaries,  an  indispensable  condition  for  tlie  settlement  and 
replantation  of  the  country. 

But  what  was  to  be  done  with  the  vast  multitudes  of  women  and 
children,  left  behind  by  the  dreadful  wars,  the  wholesale  massacres, 
the  famine,  and  the  plague,  which  had  so  wofully  thinned  the  popu- 
lation during  the  last  decade?  And,  besides  these  "widows,  deserted 
wives,  and  destitute  families,  there  were,"  says  Mr.  Prendergast, 
"plenty  of  other  persons  too,  who,  as  their  ancient  properties  had 
been  confiscated,  had  no  visible  means  of  livelihood." 

In  the  West  Indies  there  was  great  need  of  laborers.     "Just  as 

*  "  Several  Proceedings  in  Parliament,"  p.  21i6. 


344  T'/ie  Cause  of  Ireland. 

the  Kin^  of  Spain  sent  over  liis  agents  to  treat  with  the  Government 
for  the  Irish  swordsmen,  the  merchants  of  Bristol  had  agents  with  it 
treating  for  men,  women,  and  girls,  to  be  sent  to  the  sugar  plan- 
tations. .  .  .  The  Commissioners  for  Ireland  gave  them  orders  upon 
the  o-overnors  of  garrisons,  to  deliver  to  them  prisoners  of  war;  upon 
the  keepers  of  gaols,  for  offenders  in  custody;  upon  masters  of  work- 
houses, for  the  destitute  in  their  care;  .  .  .  and  gave  directions  to  all 
in  authority  to  seize  those  who  had  no  visible  means  of  livelihood, 
and  deliver  them  to  these  agents  of  the  Bristol  sugar-merchants,  in 
execution  of  which  latter  direction  Ireland  must  have  exhibited  scenes 
in  every  part  like  the  slave-hunts  in  Africa.  How  many  girls  of  gen- 
tle birth  must  have  been  caught  and  hurried  to  the  private  prisons  of 
the  men-catchers,  none  can  tell. 

"We  are  told  of  one  case,  Daniel  Connery,  a  gentleman  of  Clare, 
was  sentenced,  in  Morison's  presence,  to  banishment,  in  1G57,  by 
Colonel  Henry  Ingoldsby,  for  harboring  a  priest.  '  This  gentleman 
had  a  wife  and  twelve  children.  His  wife  fell  sick  and  died  in  pov- 
erty. Three  of  his  daughters,  beautiful  girls,  were  transported  to 
the  West  Indies,  to  an  island  called  the  Barbadoes;  and  there,  if  still 
alive  (he  says),  they  are  miserable  slaves.'*  But  at  last  the  evil 
became  too  shocking  and  notorious,  particularly  when  these  dealers 
in  Irish  flesh  began  to  seize  the  daughters  and  children  of  the  Eng- 
lish themselves,  and  to  force  them  on  board  their  slave-ships;  then, 
indeed,  the  orders,  at  the  end  of  four  years,  were  revoked."  f 

All  this  happened  under  the  Commonwealth,— when  so  much  was 
said  in  Parliament,  in  the  Pulpit,  and  published  in  the  Press,  about 
civil  and  religious  libertj',  and  the  rights  of  man;  when  the  English 
nation  professed  to  be  striving  at  the  establishment  of  pure  Gospel 
Truth  and  Morality!  De  Bonald  uttered,  at  the  beginning  of  the 
present  century,  while  England  was  applauding  and  seconding  the 
efforts  of  Wilberforce  to  emancipate  the  Negro  Slaves  in  the  West 


*  Morison's  "  Threnodia  Hiberno-Catholica"  (Innsbruck,  1659),  p.  287. 
t  "  Cromwellian  Settlement,"  pp.  89,  90. 


Tliousands  sent  in  bondage  to  Barbadoes  and  Jamaica.       345 

Indies,  and  while  Parliament  steadily  rejected  every  proposal  to 
emancipate  the  Catholics  of  Ireland:  lis  aiment  Us  negres-poiir  nepas 
aimer  leurs  frcres.  Englishmen,  even  as  the  century  is  drawing  to 
its  close,  might  ask  their  conscience  the  question.  If  they  are  not 
more  touched  by  the  wrongs  of  the  African  Zulus  or  of  the  Hindoo- 
stanee  races,  than  by  the  sufferings,  at  their  door,  of  the  Irish  agri- 
cultural population,  still  condemned  to  be  the  slaves  that  Cromwell 
made  them? 

Up  to  March  4,  1655,  they  had  shipped  G,400  Irish, — men  and 
women,  boys  and  girls. 

In  that  same  year  Admiral  Penn  conquered  Jamaica.  Cromwell 
sent  out  as  colonists  1,500  men  of  the  English  army  in  Ireland;  and 
instructed  the  Commander  of  the  army  there  to  secure  1,000  young 
girls  to  be  sent  there  also.  Henry  Cromwell,  the  Commander,  sug- 
gested adding  to  the  number  from  1,500  to  2,000  boys  of  from  twelve 
to  fourteen  years  of  age.  "We  could  well  spare  them,"  writes  Henry 
to  Oliver,  "and  they  might  be  of  use  to  you;  and  who  knows  but  it 
might  be  a  means  to  make  them  English  men — I  mean  Christians?"* 

What  is  more  terrible  than  the  irony  of  History,  which  uncon- 
sciously places  on  record  such  utterances  as  these  ?  Under  what  a 
form  was  the  divine  beauty  of  Christianity  offered  to  the  youth  of 
wretched  Ireland  by  men  whom  the  unanimous  voice  of  succeeding 
generations  has  branded  as  Hypocrites?  The  traditions  of  Catholic 
Ireland,  living  uudimmed  in  the  retentive  memory  of  her  people, 
recall  a  far  different  type  of  Englishmen,  that  of  the  Dunstans  and 
the  Alfreds  and  the  Bedes,  together  with  the  other  Christian  men 
and  women  of  their  day,  who  resorted  in  such  numbers  to  hospitable 
Erin:  the  two  nations  then  had  but  one  heart  and  one  soul,  because 
knit  together  by  the  charities  of  one  divine  faith. 

And  so  they  depopulated  Erin.  The  blood  of  Columba  and 
Columbanus,  and  of  all  the  host  of  learned  and  saintly  men  who  had 
passed  from  the  monastic  homes  of  Ireland  to  Lindisfarne  and  the 

*  Thurloe's  "  State  Papers,"  vol.  iv.,  p.  40. 


346  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

schools  of  England,  north  and  south,  and  found  everywhere  the  wel- 
come of  most  dear  brethren, — were  accounted  by  the  men  of  the  New 
Grospel  on  a  par  with  the  savages  hunted  down  and  captured  along 
the  Niger  and  the  Congo,  and  sent  to  slave  away  their  lives  in  the 
sugar-plantations  of  the  New  World! 

Such  was  the  fruit  Anglo-Norman  civilization  had  borne  in  the 
Sister  Islands  from  11G2  to  1653. 

Documentary  Evidence. 

"Messrs.  Sellick  and  Leader,  Mr.  Robert  Yeomans,  Mr.  Joseph 
Lawrence,  and  others,  all  of  Bristol,  were  active  agents.  As  one 
instance  out  of  many: — Captain  John  Vernon  was  employed  by  the 
Commissioners  for  Ireland  into  England,  and  contracted  in  their 
behalf  with  Mr.  David  Sellick  and  Mr.  Leader  under  his  hand,  bear- 
ing date  the  14th  Sept.,  1653,  to  supply  them  with  250  women  of  the 
Irish  nation  above  twelve  years,  and  under  the  age  of  forty-five;  also 
300  men  above  twelve  years  of  age  and  under  fifty,  to  be  found  in  the 
country  within  twenty  miles  of  Cork,  Youghal,  and  Kinsale,  Water- 
ford,  and  AVexford,  to  transport  them  into  New  England.  Messrs. 
Sellick  and  Leader  appointed  their  shipping  to  repair  to  Kinsale;  but 
Roger  Boyle,  Lord  Broghill  (afterwards  Earl  of  Orrery),  whose  name, 
like  that  of  Sir  Charles  Coote,  seems  ever  the  prelude  of  woe  to  the 
Irish,  suggested  that  the  required  number  of  men  and  women  might 
be  had  from  among  the  wanderers  and  persons  who  had  no  means  of 
getting  their  livelihood,  in  the  county  of  Cork  alone.  Accordingly, 
on  the  23d  October,  1653,  he  was  empowered  to  search  for  them  and 
arrest  them  and  to  deliver  them  to  Messrs.  Sellick  and  Leader,  who 
were  to  be  at  all  the  charge  of  conductmg  them  to  the  water-side, 
and  maintaining  them  from  the  time  they  received  them;  and  no 
person,  being  once  apprehended,  was  to  be  released  but  by  special 
order  in  writing  under  the  hand  of  Lord  Broghill. 

"Again,  in  January,  1654,  the  Governors  of  Carlow,  Kilkenny, 
Clonmel,  Wexford,  Ross,  and  Waterford,  had  orders  to  arrest  and 
deliver  to  Captain  Thomas  Morgan,  Dudley  North,  and  John  John- 


How  Ireland  was  to  be  Settled.  347 

son,  English  merchants, — all  wanderers,  men  and  women,  and  such 
other  Irish  within  their  precincts,  as  should  not  prove  they  had  such 
settled  course  of  industry,  as  yielded  them  a  means  of  their  own  to 
maintain  them;  all  such  children  as  were  in  hospitals  and  work- 
houses; all  prisoners — men  and  women — to  be  transported  to  the 
"West  Indies.  The  governors  were  to  guard  the  prisoners  to  the  ports 
of  shipping;  but  the*  prisoners  were  to  be  provided  for  and  main- 
tained by  the  said  contractors; — and  none  to  be  discharged  except  by 
order  under  the  hand  and  seal  of  the  governor  ordering  the  arrest/'* 

It  was  agreed  that  the  Adventurers  who  had  advanced  money  and 
raised  an  army  for  the  conquest  of  Ireland  in  1643,  and  the  officers 
and  soldiers  who  liad  taken  part  in  the  war  of  subjugation,  should 
have  an  equal  right  in  the  partition  of  lands.  On  Sept.  26,  1653,  a 
proclamation  of  the  Lord  Deputy  Fleetwood,  and  the  Commissioners 
of  Parliament,  ainiounced  that  the  rebellion  was  subdued,  and  the 
war  ended.  To  the  army  a  moiety  of  nine  principal  counties  was  dis- 
tributed, and  the  other  moiety  was  given  to  the  Adventurers.  "A 
portion  of  lands  in  Wicklow  was  all  that  was  reserved  for  those  who 
had  struggled  on  against  the  rebellion  before  the  arrival  of  Cromwell, 
and  had  been  neglected  since.  Connaught  was  reserved  entirely, 
under  certain  qualifications,  to  the  Irish,  who  were  to  be  transported 
thither  from  the  other  parts  of  the  country,  and  they  were  to  confine 
themselves  within  the  Shannon,  so  as  not  to  interfere  in  any  way  with 
the  new  English  settlers.  They  were  to  be  kept  in  awe  by  a  circle  of 
strong  English  garrisons.  The  counties  of  Dublin,  Kildare,  Carlow, 
and  Cork,  with  all  the  lands  of  bishops,  deans,  and  chapters,  were 
reserved  by  Parliament  to  be  afterward  disposed  of  at  their  pleasure. 
Courts  were  established  at  Dublin  and  Athlono,  to  hear  and  adjudge 
claims  which  might  interfere  with  the  rights  of  the  new  proprietors, 
that  by  settling  these,  the  latter  might  be  relieved  from  the  fear  of 
future  litigation. 

"  These  courts  had  also  to  determme  the  qualifications  of  the  Irish 

*  "  Cromwellian  Plantation,"  pp.  90,  91. 


o48  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

who  were  to  be  transplanted  into  Connamglit,  and  the  allotments  of 
land  to  be  given  to  them."  * 

The  Transplantation. 

On  the  11th  October,  1652,  was  published  in  Kilkenny  the  fol- 
lowing Sovereign  Decree: 

"The  Parliament  of  the  Commonwealth  of  England  having  by  one 
act  lately  passed  (entitled  an  Act  for  the  Settling  of  Ireland)  declared 
that  it  is  not  their  intention  to  extirpate  this  whole  nation,  but  that 
mercy  and  pardon  for  life  and  estate  be  extended  to  all  husbandmen, 
plowmen,  laborers,  artificers,  and  others  of  the  inferior  sort,  in  such 
manner  as  in  and  by  the  said  Act  is  set  forth;  for  the  better  execution 
of  the  said  Act,  and  that  timely  notice  may  be  given  to  all  persons 
therein  concerned,  it  is  ordered  that  the  Governor  and  Commissioners 
of  Revenue,  or  any  two  or  more  of  them,  within  every  precinct  in 
this  nation,  do  cause  the  said  Act  of  Parliament  with  this  present  dec- 
laration to  be  published  and  proclaimed  in  their  respective  precincts 
by  beat  of  drum  and  sound  of  trumpet,  on  some  market  da}^,  within 
ten  days  after  the  same  shall  come  unto  them." 

It  w^as  the  disinheriting  and  proscribing  of  a  whole  nation.  All 
the  Catholic  nobility  and  most  of  the  gentry,  together  with  such  of 
the  Protestant  aristocracy  and  higher  clergy,  who  had  been  faithful 
to  the  King,  were  outlawed  and  banished.  The  inferior  classes  were 
despoiled  of  all  right  and  title  in  the  land  of  their  forefathers.  That 
the  classes  above  enumerated  were  excepted  from  the  decree  of 
EXTIKPATION  intended  to  apply,  as  far  as  practicable,  to  "the  whole, 
nation," — was  an  act  of  dire  necessity :  Ireland  must  otherwise 
have  remained  uncultivated,  and,  besides,  their  uttermost  efforts  "to 
extirpate  the  whole  nation"  had  failed,  thanks  to  the  indomitable 
spirit  of  "the  Gael." 

"There  is  an  anecdote  told  by  an  English  monk  of  the  order  of 
the  Friars  Minors,  who  must  have  dwelt,  disguised  probably  (a  not 

*  Wright,  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  113. 


The  Nation  Disinherited  and  ProscHbed.  349 

uncommon  incident),  as  a  soldier  or  servant,  in  tlie  household  of 
Colonel  Ingoldsby,  Governor  of  Limerick,  that  explains  the  reason 
why  the  common  people  were  to  be  allowed  to  stay,  and  the  gentry 
to  transplant.  He  heard  the  question  asked  of  a  great  Protestant 
statesman,  ,  .  .  who  gave  three  reasons  for  it: — First,  he  said,  they 
are  useful  to  the  English  as  earth-tillers  and  herdsmen;  secondly, 
deprived  of  their  priests  and  gentry,  and  living  among  the  English, 
it  is  hoped  they  will  become  Protestants;  and,  thirdly,  the  gentry 
without  their  aid  must  work  for  themselves  and  their  families,  and 
so  in  time  turn  iaito  common  peasants,  or  die,  if  they  don't."  * 

It  was,  therefore,  a  wholesale  national  confiscation.  And  the 
faint  sbadowings  of  mercy  which  seemed  to  attach  to  the  exceptional 
clauses,  were  as  unsubstantial  as  shadows,  and  disappeared  as  quickl}'- 
in  the  working  of  the  Act.  Hatred,  invincible  hatred,  toward  the 
English  settlers,  was  assigned,  on  the  part  of  the  proscribed  Irish,  as 
the  reason  for  transplanting  them  to  Connaught  and  confining  them 
there,  until  they  could  be  gradually  extinguished,  or  merged  in  the 
surrounding  mass  of  the  Protestant  English  and  Scotch.  Kone  were 
excepted  but  such  as  could  prove  a  Constant  Good  Affection  toward 
the  Parliament  and  Commonwealth  since  the  beginning  of  the  Civil 
War.  Loyalty  to  the  King,  affection  toward  his  dynasty,  sacrifices 
undergone  in  his  service,  even  against  the  Kilkenny  Confederates,  was 
of  no  avail  to  save  noble,  gentleman,  or  soldier,  from  the  decree  of 
expatriation  and  exju-opriation.  Besides,  whosoever,  among  the 
farming  classes  and  the  tradesmen,  had  borne  arms  against  the  Par- 
liament,— no  matter  what  compulsion  or  necessity  they  might  plead 
for  so  doing, — were  to  go  to  Connaught.  To  the  middle  space  in 
that  Province  assigned  to  the  Transplanters,  they  were  ordered  to  go 
under  pain  of  death  before  May  1st,  1654.  The  only  exceptions 
were:  Irish  women  married  to  Protestants  before  Dec.  2,  1C50,  and 
consenting  to  become  Protestants;  boys  under  fourteen,  and  girls 
under  twelve,  in  the  service  of  Protestants  and  to  be  brought  up  as 

*  Threnodia  Hibcrno-Catholica. 


350  TJie  Cause  of  Ireland. 

such;  and  those  who  conld  prove  their  "constant  good  affection"  to 
the  ParHanient  in  preference  to  the  King. 

And  what  was  the  condition  of  Connanght  in  the  year  of  Trans- 
plantation, 1653-54  ? 

AVe  have  the  authority  of  Warner  for  the  following  statement, 
which  may  enable  us  to  form  a  correct  judgment  on  this  point. 
"The  same  part,"  he  says,  "which  Lord  Incliiquin  was  playing  in 
Munster,  by  burning,  plundering,  and  destroying  the  country,  even 
to  the  gates  of  Limerick,  was  acted  by  Sir  Charles  Coote  in  Con- 
naught,  Avith  a  design,  as  it  was  supposed,  to  relieve  Bonratty;  but 
he  contented  himself  with  wasting  and  burning  the  estates  of  Lord 
Clanrickarde."* 

One  would  justly  conclude  that  the  object  of  the  Parliament  and 
its  Counselors  in  Ireland,  was  to  give  the  order  for  transplanting  at 
the  very  time  (Oct.  15,  1653)  when  all  kinds  of  difficulties  combined 
to  render  its  execution  morally  and  physically  impossible;  and  thus 
to  find  in  the.  non-compliance  of  the  unhappy  people,  a  pretext  for 
falling  on  them  and  exterminating  them. 

They  were  engaged  in  the  labor  of  gathering  the  harvest  or  pre- 
paring for  putting  in  the  winter-crop,  when  the  order  came  upon 
them  like  a  thunder-clap  in  a  summer  sky.  They  should  be  com- 
pelled to  travel  in  the  inclement  season,  to  follow  the  few  roads  to  the 
fords  over  the  Shannon;  and  these  roads  had  been  rendered  almost 
impassable  by  the  frequent  movements  of  the  hostile  armies  for  more 
than  ten  successive  years. 

But  the  near  interests  of  the  English  Settlers  themselves  were 
involved  in  this  sudden  departure.  The  lands  abandoned  by  the 
emigrants  could  not  be  tilled  for  the  coming  Spring, — and  already 
every  article  of  food  in  Ireland  was  sold  at  famine  prices. 

The  Parliament  Commissioners,  in  the  sanctimonious  slang  then 
de  rigueur  in  all  official  documents,  ordained  a  day  of  fasting,  "invit- 
ing the  commanders  and  officers  of  the  army  to  join  them  in  lifting 

*  Warner,  p.  371. 


The  Exodus  into  Connaught.  351 

« 
up  praj'ers  witli  strong  crying  and  tears  to  Him  to  whom  nothing  is 

too  liard,  that  His  servants,  wliom  Ho  had  called  forth  in  this  day  to 

act  in  these  great  transactions,  might  be  made  faithful  and  carried  on 

by  His  own  outstretched  arm  against  all  opposition  and  difficulty,  to 

do  what  was  pleasing  in  His  sight." 

Had  the  politico-religious  teaching  so  sedulously  inculcated  on  two 
generations  of  Protestant  men  in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  so  warped 
their  understanding,  so  perverted  all  natural  feeling, — that  this  great 
and  solemn  violation  of  the  most  sacred  rights  of  an  entire  nation, 
could  be  looked  upon  as  "God's  work,"  and  His  aid  thus  publicly 
implored  toward  performing  it,  without  any  regard  to  the  claims  of 
humanity,  of  pity  for  the  suffering? 

At  any  rate,  the  work  was  pushed  forward  with  relentless  rigor. 
The  few  cases  of  great  hardship  mitigated  by  the  Commissioners, 
were  confined  to  the  nobility  and  gentry, — to  those  who  strove  to  urge 
in  their  own  favor  their  hostility  to  the  Insurrection,  their  traditional 
hatred  of  the  mere  Irish.  As  to  these  "  mere  Irish"  themselves, — 
the  overwhelming  mass  of  the  victims  of  this  gigantic  and  unparal- 
leled Wrong,  they  complained  not;  for  it  was  vain  for  them  to  com- 
plain. They  gave  up  home  and  everything  for  the  sake  of  Him  in 
whom  alone  was  their  trust. 

Those  petitioning  for  delay,  or  relief,  or  alleviation  in  some  form 
of  their  cruel  fate,  bore  the  names  of  '  Fitzgerald,  Butler,  Plunket, 
Barnwall,  Cheever,  Dillon,  Cusack,' — the  descendants  of  the  men, 
who,  in  1535,  when  Hem-y  VIII.  had  put  down  Lord  Thomas  Fitz- 
gerald, and  cut  off  by  the  axe  of  the  executioner  every  branch  of  the 
Fitzgerald  tree  in  his  power,  were  found  petitioning  the  English 
tyrant  to  extirpate  or  transplant  these  "mere  Irish."  The  children 
were  bearing  the  sins  of  their  parents  even  in  the  third  and  fourth 
generation. 

The  Order  of  October  15,  enjoined  on  all  fathers  and  heads  of 
families  to  appear  in  Loughrea,  before  January  30,  1654,  there  to 
obtain  from  the  Commissioners  of  Parliament  the  lands  in  Connaught 
to  which  they  were  entitled.     Each  head  of  a  household  gave  in  a 


352  The  Cause  qf  Ireland. 

full  schedule,  descriptive  of  the  number  of  persons  belonging  to  him 
or  dependent  on  him,  with  their  personal  churacteristics,  &c.  Xo 
European  police  office  in  modern  times  contained  on  its  lists,  or  on 
the  passports  delivered  by  it,  a  more  graphic  or  minute  detail  of  the 
physiognomy,  stature,  of  each  person  applying  there  for  permission  to 
travel.  All  these  are  still  in  existence,  were  examined  by  the  Author 
of  the  "Cromwellian  Settlement," — and  can  still  instruct  the  student 
of  Irish  history.  .  .  .  These  details  were  necessary  to  the  armies  of 
officials  and  the  long  line  of  military  garrisons  enclosing  Comiaught 
along  the  Shannon  and  along  the  sea-coast.  Any  man  or  Avoman  so 
described,  appearing  thereafter  outside  that  wall  of  fire,  could  be  shot 
down  like  a  wild  beast.     And  they  were  shot  down. 

It  is, — shall  we  call  it? — a  curious,  or  rather  a  deeply-moving, 
study,  to  contemplate  these  pen-and-ink  sketches  of  persons,  this 
photographic  gallery  of  such  a  large  number  of  our  people,  the 
fellow-suflferers  of  the  heroic  Celts  of  1654.  The  world  was  not  wor- 
thy of  them.  The  world  looked  on  and  permitted  the  perpetration 
of  the  foulest  crime  on  record.  The  Christian  world  formed  by  the 
Church  and  which,  before  the  Reformation,  had  been  one  great  fam- 
ily, was  now  miserably  broken  up  and  divided.  Tlie  Common  Father 
of  Christendom  could  no  longer  interfere,  in  the  name  of  Christ,  and 
with  the  spiritual  weapons  of  his  high  office,  to  prevent  one  nation 
from  exterminating  or  enslaving  another.  Unhappily,  it  Avas  for 
their  fidelity  to  him, — the  Vicar  of  Christ,  so  long  acknowledged  as 
such  by  England  herself, — that  the  Irish  people  were  now  undergo- 
ing far  worse  than  Egyptian  bondage  and  oppression. 

Now, — be  it  well  remembered, — this  Act  of  the  English  Par- 
liament confiscating,  by  the  sole  right  of  the  strongest,  the  in- 
heritance of  a  nation,  is  the  sole  source  of  the  title  by  which  Irish 
landlords  hold  their  possessions, — the  sole  source  and  sanction  of  the 
relation  which  obtains  between  them  and  the  tillers  and  tenants  of 
the  soil.  It  is  a  title  wholly  and  essentially  null  in  its  origin  and 
nature;  and  no  length  of  possession  can  purge  away  the  defect  which 
vitiates  it  in  its  very  origin. 


A  Fearful  Spectacle.  353 

We  remark  this  here,  to  remind  the  reader,  that  this  claim  shall 
be  fully  discussed  further  on. 

And  what  of  the  wretched  emigrants  in  their  new  homes  in  Con- 
naught?  Let  us  listen  to  the  recital  of  Mi\  Prendergast, — who  bor- 
rows every  detail  from  the  original  documents  in  the  Government 
records. 

"They  found  tlie  country  a  waste.  In  the  summer  of  this  year 
the  famine  was  so  sore  that  the  natives  had  eaten  up  all  the  horses 
they  could  get,  and  were  feeding  upon  one  another,  the  living  eating 
the  dead.  The  county  of  Clare  was  totally  ruined,  and  deserted  of 
inhabitants.  Out  of  nine  baronies,  comprising  1,300  ploughlands, 
not  above  forty  ploughlands  at  the  most,  lying  in  the  barony  of  Bun- 
ratty,  were  inhabited  in  the  month  of  Jime,  1653,  except  some  few 
persons  living  for  safety  in  garrisons.  Scarce  a  place  to  shelter  in. 
The  castles  either  sleighted  by  gunpowder,  as  dangerous  to  be  left  in 
the  hands  of  the  Irish;  or  occupied  by  the  English  soldiery,  or  by  the 
ancient  proprietors,  who  looked  upon  the  transplanters  as  enemies 
liable  to  supplant  them,  and,  therefore,  encouraged  their  followers  to 
give  them  rough  reception.  Besides  this,  the  Loughrea  Com- 
missioners gave  some  of  the  earliest  transplanters  assignments  in  the 
barony  of  Barren,  in  the  county  of  Clare,  one  of  the  barrenest,  where 
it  was  commonly  said  there  was  not  wood  enough  to  hang  a  man, 
water  enough  to  drown  him,  or  earth  enough  to  bury  him.  They 
were  therefore  scared,  like  the  first  beasts  too  suddenly  driven  at  a 
slaughter  yard,  communicating  their  terrors  to  the  herd  behind. 
The  English  officers,  too,  wore  not  assisting  to  put  them  in  possession 
of  their  assignments.  Ferrymen  and  toll-keepers  were  exacting  tolls, 
contrary  to  the  orders  of  the  Government." 

"The  Herd,"  however,  covering  as  it  did  three  entire  provinces, 
could  not  be  made  to  move.  Like  wild  animals  crowding  into  a 
defile,  where  the  leaders  become  so  tightly  wedged  together,  that 
they  can  neither  move  forward  nor  retreat,  so  great  is  the  pressure 
from  behind,  so  was  it  with  the  panic-stricken  population  of  the 
Transplantable  in  both  cities  and  country  places.  The  heads  and 
23 


354  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

fathers  of  families  who  liad  gone  before  to  build  cabins  and  prepare 
for  the  coming  of  their  households,  became  in  very  deed  panic- 
stricken  at  the  appalling  prospect  before  them.  And  from  them 
the  panic  spread  to  the  expectant  and  despairing  multitudes 
behind. 

In  vain,  discouraged  themselves  at  the  physical  impossibility  of 
forcing  a  whole  people  to  move  on  to  their  own  destruction,  or  of 
executing  punishment  oil  the  delaying  and  recalcitrant, — the  Com- 
missioners obtained  that  certain  limitations  should  be  put  to  the 
qualities  that  marked  out  a  man  or  woman  as  "transplantable." 
They  limited  them,  at  length,  to  "Proprietors  of  lands  and  tlieir  fam- 
ilies, and  to  Persons  that  had  contrived  Eebellion,  or  abetted  it,  or 
had  actually  borne  arms."  And  then,  there  were  the  sick,  the  aged, 
the  blind,  the  impotent.  To  those  granted  delays, — and  only  delaj's, 
not  exemption  from  transplantation, — were  next  added  persons  who 
had  aided  the  English  armies,  who  had  discovered  rebels,  who  had 
sheltered  English  and  Protestants  from  being  murdered,  and  those 
giving  good  proof  of  their  renouncing  '  the  Popish  Superstition  and  the 
Bishop  of  Home,'  or  should  show  a  sincere  desire  of  being  instructed 
"  in  the  true  and  saving  knowledge  of  Christ,  and  Ilis  Gospels,  and 
Truths." 

It  was  offering  a  most  tempting  bribe  to  what  sincere  believers 
must  deem  apostasy. 

But  behind  this  "panic-stricken  Herd"  were  the  regiments  of 
English  soldiers,  to  whom  arrears  of  pay  were  due,  and  who,  in  their 
land-liiDiger,  were  impatient  to  enter  into  possession  of  the  property 
of  the  transplanted;  and  behind  the  soldiers  in  arms,  di'iving  the 
herd  at  the  point  of  the  lance,  and  their  veteran  comrades  clamoring 
loudly  for  a  settlement,  were  the  Adventurers  in  England,  and  the 
Avhole  English  nation  joining  in  the  clamor  either  because  they  were 
impelled  by  that  same  "land-hunger,"  or  because  they  were  animated 
by  a  fierce  spirit  of  race-hatred  toward  the  Irish  and  of  hostility  to 
their  religion. 

We  quote  from  Mr.  Prendergast's  teeming  pages: 


Impatietit  Voices  urging  "the   Work"  forward.  355 

"Dublin,  May  31,  1654. 

"  We  are  somewhat  in  a  confused  posture  yet  with  our  transplan- 
tation: many  are  gone,  but  many  others  play  'loth  to  depart.'  And 
many  are  dispensed  with:  as,  particularly,  one  whole  town,  Cashel, 
towards  which  we  had  no  great  obligation  upon  us.  But  the  Lord, 
who  is  a  jealous  God,  and  more  knowing  of,  as  well  as  jealous  against, 
their  iniquity  than  we  are,  by  a  fire  on  the  IStli  instant  hath  burnt 
down  the  whole  town  in  little  more  than  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  except 
some  few  houses  that  the  English  lived  in.  .  .  . 

"  The  pei'sons  that  got  their  dispensations  from  the  transplanta- 
tion, died  the  day  before  the  fire,  of  the  plague,  and  none  else  long 
before  nor  since  dead  of  the  disease  there." 

Wonderful,  and  edifying — very.  But,  a  superficial  reader  might 
be  induced  to  guess  that  there  were  some  earthly  agencies  busy  in  the 
burning  of  the  houses  as  well  as  the  death  of  the  unfortunate  "dis- 
pensed." 

"  Dublin,  July  12,  1654. 

"The  transplanting  work  moves  on  but  slowly.  .  .  .  The  flood- 
gates being  shut  from  transporting  (to  Spain),  and  one  vent  being 
stopped  from  sending  away  the  soldiery,  part  of  them  Irish,  they 
begin  to  break  out  into  Torying,*  and  the  waters  begin  to  rise  again 
upon  us." 

"  Dublin,  August  24,  1654. 

"The  work  of  transplanting  is  at  a  stand.     The  Tories  flie  out 

*  Father  Denis  Murphy  S.  J.,  in  "  Cromwell  in  Ireland,"  gives  this  explanation 
of  the  word  Tory,  as  applied  here.  "During  the  rebellion  of  1641  the  name  of 
Tories  was  given  to  such  persons  as  at  first  preferred  to  remain  neutral,  but  who 
ultimately — perhaps  urged  by  their  loss  of  property  and  consequent  distress — took 
up  arms  with  a  view  of  reprisal  or  revenge  on  those  by  whom  they  had  been  reduced 
to  absolute  ruin.  English  and  Irish,  Protestant  and  Catholic,  Republican  and  Roy- 
alist, were  alike  their  common  enemies;  and,  being  joined  by  men  of  desperate 
fortunes,  they  united  themselves  into  bodies  and  became  formidable  gangs  of  free- 
booters, who  harassed  the  regular  troops  of  all  parties  without  distinction.  ...  It 
was  applied  by  the  opponents  of  Charles  I.  to  his  party,  under  the  idea  that  they 
favored  the  Irish  rebels.  By  an  easy  transition,  it  became  the  distinctive  appella- 
tion of  the  party  who  wished  for  the  widest  extension  of  the  royal  prerogative. 
Some  derive  it  from  Tar,  a  Bigh, '  Come,  O  King,'  a  cry  used  by  the  Irish  adherents 
of  Charles  I.    Titus  Gates  used  to  call  any  one  who  opposed  him  a  Tory." 


356  The  Cause  of  IreJnnd. 

and  increase.  It  is  the  nature  of  this  people  to  be  rebellious:  and 
they  have  been  so  much  the  more  disposed  to  it,  having  been  highly 
exasperated  by  the  transplanting  work.  This  makes  many  turn 
Tories  who  give  no  quarter,  none  being  given  to  them." 

"  Dubinin,  December  21,  1654. 
"The  transplantation  is  now  far  advanced,  the  men  being  gone. 
.  .  .     Their  wives  and  children  and  dependants  have  been  and  are 
packing  away  after  them  apace,  and  all  are  to  be  gone  by  the  1st  of 
March  next." 

On  Feb.  27,  1655,  appeared  a  proclamation  of  the  Lord  Deputy 
and  Council,  allowing  the  wives  and  families  of  Transplanters  to 
obtain  licenses  to  remain  until  May  1st,  provided  their  husbands  were 
in  Connaught  by  March  1.  But  a  certificate  was  to  be  sent  back 
from  the  Commissioners  at  Loughrea  attesting  that  the  husbands 
were  gone  to  prepare  for  their  families.  Otherwise,  they  and  their 
families  were  to  be  "out  of  protection,"  that  is,  treated  as  enemies  in 
a  state  of  war. 

Here  is  one  cry  of  joy  from  the  "  land-hungry  "  : 

"  Atht,  March  4,  1654-5. 
"...  The  time  prescribed  for  the  transplantation  of  the  Irish 
proprietors,  and  those  that  have  been  in  arms  and  abettors  of  the 
rebellion,  being  near  at  hand,  the  officers  are  resolved  to  fill  the  gaols 
and  to  seize  them:  by  which  this  bloody  people  will  know  that  they  (the 
officers)  are  not  degenerated  from  English  principles;  though  I  pre- 
sume we  shall  be  very  tender  of  hanging  any  but  leading  men.  Yet 
we  shall  make  no  scruple  of  sending  them  to  the  West  Indies  where 
they  will  serve  for  planters,  and  help  to  plant  the  plantation.  ..." 

Urged  on  by  the  tyrannical  public  opinion  in  both  countries,  the 
Government  at  once  took  the  most  effective  measures.  They  seized 
and  sold  the  crops  of  the  laggard  Transplanters,  applying  the  money 
to  relieve  the  distressed  in  Connaught.     They  ordered  the  arrest  and 


No  Dispensation  for  Proprietors.  357 

imprisonment  of  all  who  had  not  departed  on  the  day  assigned. 
Troopers  and  soldiers  in  every  part  of  the  Kingdom  issued  from  their 
garrisons  and  seized  high  and  low,  dragging  them  from  their  beds  in 
the  dead  of  night,  and  driving  them  in  great  herds  before  them  to 
the  nearest  gaols.  But  there  were  not  gaols  enough,  nor  room  enough 
in  the  gaols.  They  were  now  "out  of  protection,"  that  is,  outlawed 
and  subject  to  military  executions.  Courts  martial  were  organized, 
"some  were  put  to  death;  others  sold  as  slaves  into  America,  others 
detained  in  prison  till  they  were  not  able  to  put  bread  into  their 
mouths;  others,  as  partakers  of  the  greatest  favor  that  could  be 
expected,  only  released  on  condition  of  transplanting  into  Con- 
naught."* 

So,  imder  whatever  thin  veil  of  moderation  or  false  semblance  of 
justice  the  Government  tried  to  conceal  their  real  intent,  the  Avork  of 
extermination  went  on, — in  Connaught  and  outside  of  Connaught. 

What  was  to  be  done  with  the  imprisoiied  masses,  for  whom  the 
limited  slave-markets  in  America  offered  no  outlet,  and  with  the  far 
greater  mass  of  destitute  and  homeless,  now  driven  from  their  lands 
and  dwellings  by  the  new  proprietors  ? 

It  is  fearful  to  write  of  these  things,  fearful  to  think  of  them. 
Yet  we  must  conclude  our  narrative. 

To  the  anxious  enquiries  of  officials  in  the  various  Precincts,  the 
Government  laid  down  as  a  rule,  that  in  granting  the  favor  of  a  fur- 
ther delay,  or  in  exempting  from  the  penalties  of  outlawry  incurred 
by  unauthorized  delay  to  transplant,  a  distinction  should  be  made  in 
the  two  classes  of  Proprietors  and  Swordmen.  Under  the  former 
class  (of  course,  they  were  to  be  transplanted  by  all  means,  for  their 
lands  or  houses  were  wanted),  were  to  be  ranked  all  mortgageors  and 
mortgagees,  and  their  eldest  sons;  the  brothers,  sons,  or  next  heirs  of 
such,  and  all  who  could  have  any  possible  claim  to  inherit  from  them; 
lessees  for  seven  years  and  their  children;  widows  entitled  to  their 
jointure;  the  wives  and  children  of  swordmen  gone  to  Spain;  and  " 
the  orphans  of  transplantable  persons.  .  .  . 

*  See  Carte  Papers,  vol.  vii.,  p.  6,  in  the  Bodleian  Library. 


358  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

In  one  word  every  category  of  persons  who  had  any  actual  or  pro- 
spective right  to  the  soil  of  Ireland,  to  house,  home,  or  tenement  on 
that  soil,  was, — by  this  legislation, — outlawed,  disfranchised,  and 
placed  outside  the  pale  of  humanity. 

From  out  the  overcrowded  prisons, — crowded  often  with  the  high 
born  and  the  once  opulent,  it  was  decreed  that  "They  might  also  set 
at  liberty  and  dispense  for  six  months,  those  who,  though  not  able  to 
prove  constant  good  affection,  could  be  held  Good  Affection  men,  not 
however  above  forty  in  number  from  each  district  prison." 

So, — for  the  Irish,  the  Irish  Catholic  nation,  who  could  claim  no 
Good  Affection,  and  who  gloried  in  not  claiming  it, — there  was  no 
license,  no  delay,  no  relief  from  misery  save  in  death,  or  in  the  heroic 
resolve  to  suffer  the  worst,  and  brave  every  danger,  while  remaining 
true  to  Erin  and  to  God.  ...  I  shall  not  pity  them;  but  bless  them 
and  worship  their  memory. 

But  here  comes  in  the  New  Gospel. 

"And  all  such  Swordmen  and  Proprietors  as  by  two  Justices  of 
the  Peace  were  certified  to  have  really  renounced  popery,  and  for 
six  months  past  had  constantly  resorted  to  Protestant  worship,  were, 
on  giving  security  to  transplant  by  the  12th  of  April  following,  to  be 
set  at  libert3^  Protestantism  now  appeared  so  amiable  that  con- 
versions spread." 

So  speaks  from  his  honest  heart  and  indignant  spirit  this  brave 
Protestant. 

The  Lord  Deputy  and  Council  did  not  give  implicit  belief  to  the 
professions  of  the  new  converts.  Proper  persons  of  the  sterling  Puri- 
tan stamp  were  sent  to  the  localities  where  the  neophytes  abounded. 
When  insincerity  Avas  apparent, — as  in  the  perverts  of  Cape  Clear 
Island  and  Connemara  in  1647-48, — "the  Irish  so  offending  were  to 
be  made  an  example  of  by  requiring  them  to  transplant  forthwith 
into  Connaught." 

Death  preferred  to  Transplantation. 

"  Dublin,  July  27,  1655. 

*'The  business  of  transplanting  is  not  yet  finished.     The  Irish 


A   Voice  in  England  denounces  Transplantation.  359 

cliuse  death  rather  than  remove  from  their  wonted  habitations.     But 
the  State  is  resolved  to  see  it  done." 

In  the  month  of  March  precedhig,  however,  the  impatient  ad- 
venturers and  the  wrathful  anti-Popery  public  of  London  were  re- 
joiced to  learn  that  "Daniel  Fitzpatrick  and  another  in  Ireland/'  had 
been  "condemned  (to  death)  by  the  Commissioners  in  Kilkenny  for 
refusing  to  transport  themselves  into  Connaught,  which  makes  the 
rest  to  hasten." 

In  the  same  month,  the  Court  Martial  sitting  in  St.  Patrick's 
Cathedral,  Dublin,  to  pronounce  on  all  such  cases,  sentenced  Mr. 
Edward  Hetherington  of  Kilnemanagh  to  death  for  the  same  crime. 
He  was  executed  April  3,  being  hanged  with  placards  on  his  breast 
and  back  "for  not  transplanting." 

Of  the  others  who  perished  by  sentence  of  these  Courts  Martial, 
sitting  in  every  province,  we  are  not  informed  in  detail,  and  we  need 
not  inquire  further. 

Among  the  twenty-nine  representatives  of  Ireland,  who  sat  in  the 
English  Parliament  in  1G54,  was  the  son  of  a  planter  of  James  L, 
who,  born  in  Ireland,  had  learned  to  love  the  Irish  people.  He  rep- 
resented the  district  of  Kinsale;  and  mixing  from  his  cradle  with  that 
bright,  intelligent,  irrepressible  southern  folk,  he  conceived  them  to 
be,  as  a  people,  morally  and  intellectually  superior  to  their  Anglo- 
Saxon  revilers.  His  soul  revolted,  while  sitting  in  that  fanatical  par- 
liament, both  against  the  calumnies  uttered  in  public  against  the  Irish 
character,  and  the  unjustifiable,  suicidal  wrong  done  to  the  nation  by 
the  scheme  to  which  Parliament  had  committed  itself. 

He,  Vincent  Clookin,  wrote  and  published  a  book,  which  ex- 
ploded, like  one  of  our  modern  Dynamite  Cartridges,  among  the 
Roundheads  of  Westminster  and  Whitehall.* 


*  "The  Great  Case  of  Transplantation  in  Ireland  Discussed;  or  certain  Con- 
siderations, wherein  the  many  jjrcat  Inconveniences  in  transplantinp^  the  Natives  of 
Ireland  .  .  ,  into  the  Province  uf  Connaught  are  shown,"  &c.  4to.  London:  for  J. 
C,  1655. 


360  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

The  new  planters — the  disbanded  soldiers  in  particular — could  not 
do  without  the  Irish,  who,  both  women  and  men,  were  more  expert 
in  all  kinds  of  husbandry,  and  native  manufactures:  in  every  one  hun- 
di'ed  men  were  to  be  found  at  least  five  or  six  masons  or  carpenters, 
and  these  more  skilful  and  ready  at  all  sorts  of  contrivance  than  any 
others.  The  revenue  would  be  ruined  by  the  transplantation;  for 
this  came  from  the  abundant  crops  of  corn  raised  by  the  Irish  and 
exported  to  England. 

The  transplanting  multiplied  Tories;  and  Tories  made  the  new 
plantations  outside  of  Connaught  impossible.  And  then  comes  this 
picture  of  a  ruined  nation, — the  most  saddening  ever  drawn  by  the 
hand  of  man: 

"The  chiefest  and  eminentest  of  the  nobility,  and  many  of  the 
gentry,  had  taken  conditions  from  tlie  King  of  Spain,  and  had  trans- 
ported 40,000  of  the  most  active  spirited  men,  most  acquainted  with 
the  dangers  and  discipline  of  Avar.  The  priests  were  all  banished. 
The  remaining  part  of  the  whole  nation  was  scarce  one-sixth  part  of 
what  they  were  at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  so  great  a  devastation 
had  God  and  man  brought  upon  that  land.  And  that  handful  of 
natives  left  were  poor  laborers,  simple  creatures,  whose  sole  design 
was  to  live  and  maintain  their  families,  the  manner  of  which  was  so 
low,  that  their  design  was  rather  to  be  pitied  than  by  anybody  feared 
or  hindered.  ..." 

Then  came  the  difficulty  of  enforcing  transplantation.  "The  Irish 
would  say  they  could  but  find  want  and  ruin  at  the  worst  if  they  stay; 
and  why  should  they  travel  so  far  for  that  which  will  come  home  to 
them  ?  Against  transplantation  the  Irish  have  ('tis  strange)  as  great 
a  resentment  as  against  loss  of  estate,  yea,  even  death  itself.  But, 
supposing  they  should  have  a  dram  of  rebellious  blood  in  them,  or  be 
sullen  and  not  go?  Can  it  be  imagined  that  a  whole  nation  will  drive 
like  geese  at  the  wagging  of  a  hat  upon  a  stick  ?  .  .  .  Wlien  then 
will  this  wild  war  be  finished;  Ireland  planted;  inhabitants  disbur- 
thened;  soldiers  settled?  The  unsettling  of  a  nation  is  easy  work; 
the  settling  is  not.     The  opportunity  for  it  is  not  always:  it  is  now.  .  . 


Exterminate  the  Cannanites.  361 

It  had  been  better  if  Ireland  had  been  thrown  into  the  sea  before 
the  first  engagement  on  it,  if  it  is  never  to  be  settled." 

Those  now  armed  with  joower,  both  in  England  and  in  Ireland, 
were  firmly  resolved  to  "  settle  "  the  subjugated  country  iu  their  own 
way,  and  once  for  all.  If,  on  one  side,  you  had  the  stream  of  the 
transplanted  impelled  toward  Connaught  by  all  the  means  of  "sua- 
sion" Cromwell  and  his  lieutenants  could  command;  on  the  other 
side,  you  had  the  hosts  of  hungry  and  wrathful  soldiers  and  adven- 
turers, who  were  waiting  for  their  promised  lands.  They  besieged 
night  and  day  the  Commissioners,  the  more  ancient  soldiers  thrusting 
the  priority  of  their  claims  upon  the  representatives  of  Power.  Eank 
behind  rank  these  impatient,  expectant  multitudes  stood  wrangling 
among  themselves,  bringing  to  bear  upon  the  Commissioners  the 
mighty  j)ressure  of  their  numbers  and  their  fanaticism. 

Hear  this  clamor  ascending  from  the  officers  and  soldiers  nearest 
to  Dublin  Castle  :  *  they  pray  for  the  immediate  and  perfect  enforce- 
ment of  the  Order  of  the  Council  of  State  in  England,  confirmed  by 
Parliament  Sept.  37,  1653,  requiring  the  removal  into  Connaught  of 
all  the  Irish  nation,  except  boys  of  fourteen  and  girls  of  twelve. 

"We  humbly  conceive  that  the  proclamation  for  transplanting 
only  the  proprietors  and  such  as  have  bin  in  arms  will  neither  answer 
the  end  of  safety  nor  what  else  is  aimed  at  thereby.  For  the  first 
purpose  of  the  transplantation  is  to  prevent  those  of  natural  principles 
[i.e.,  of  natural  affections]  becoming  one  with  those  Irish,  as  well  in 
affinity  as  in  idolatry,  as  many  thousands  did,  who  came  over  in 
Queen  Elizabeth's  time,  many  of  which  have  had  a  deep  hand  in  all 
the  late  murthers  and  massacres.  And  shall  we  join  in  affinity " — 
they  ask — "with  the  people  of  these  abominations?  Would  not  the 
Lord  be  angry  with  us  till  he  consumes  us,  having  said,  '  The  land 
Avhich  ye  go  to  possess  is  an  unclean  land,  because  of  the  filthiness  of 


*  "The humble  petition  of  the  Officers  within  the  Precincts  of  Dublin,  Cather- 
lough  (Carlow),  Wexford,  and  Kilkenny,  in  the  behalf  of  themselves,  their  soul- 
diers,  and  other  faithful  English  Protestants,  to  the  Lord  Deputy  and  Council  of 
Ireland." 


363  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

the  people  that  dwell  therein.  Ye  shall  not  therefore  give  your  sons 
to  their  daughters,  nor  take  their  daughters  to  your  sons/  as  it  is  in 
Ezra  ix.  11,  12,  14.  ^  Nay,  ye  shall  surely  root  them  out  before  you, 
lest  they  cause  you  to  forsake  the  Lord  your  God,'  Deut.  vii.  2,  3, 
4,  16,  18.  .  .  ."* 

"Accordingly,"  says  Mr.  Prendergast,  "the  State  pressed  on  the 
great  work.  'They  were  resolved  to  see  it  done.'  Again  and  again 
they  filled  the  gaols,  threatening  to  execute  the  criminals. 

"Wholesale  executions,  however,  for  this  crime,  seem  to  have 
been  thought  inexpedient;  but  the  Government  had  no  scruple,  we 
see,  in  sending  them  to  the  West  Indies." 

The  Irish  Catholics  in  Ireland  Avere  only  noxious  weeds:  they 
MUST  BE  ROOTED  OUT.  And  into  ships  they  cast  them,  to  be  thrown 
on  the  rocks  of  Barbadoes,  or  handed  over  as  bond-slaves  to  the 
planters  of  Jamaica  and  of  the  English  colonies  on  the  adjoining 
continent. 

We  have  seen  that  Parliament,  in  ordering  the  Irish  from  the 
other  provinces  to  "transplant"  into  Connaught,  had  reserved  for 
"English  use"  the  cities  and  towns,  with  a  circuit  of  some  miles 
round  each:  besides  this,  the  entire  province  was  to  be  surrounded 
by  a  belt  of  several  miles  in  width  reserved  to  the  veteran  soldiers, 
who  would  thus  form  a  living  wall  between  the  Exiles,  their  former 
homes,  and  the  outside  world  beyond  the  seas.  But,  by  degrees,  the 
area  within  this  circle  was  narrowed  for  the  transplanted,  the  entire 
county  of  Mayo  being  set  apart  to  pay  the  arrears  of  a  privileged 
portion  of  the  army,  and  other  fertile  and  favored  districts  here  and 
there  taken  up  for  the  same  purposes.  It  was  a  skilfully  devised 
scheme  of  completing  by  gradual  suffocation  the  process  of  "rooting 
out"  not  perfected  by  enlistment  for  foreign  service  or  transportation 
to  the  West  Indies.  The  native  inhabitants  of  Connaught  were  con- 
sidered as  having  no  right  to  the  lands  which  had  belonged  from  time 
immemorial  to  their  ancestors,  and  were  separated,  of  set  design,  and 

*  "  Mercnrius  Politicus,  comprising  the    Summe  of  all  Intelligence,"  &c.    A 
weekly  publication,     P.  5236. 


The  Spoiling  of  the  Canaanites.  3G3 

scattered  whithersoever  tliose  who  fulfilled  tlie  orders  of  the  Commis- 
sioners thought  fit  to  drive  them. 

It  was  exasperating  enough  to  have  to  give  up  their  own  liome- 
steads  to  their  own  brethren  of  Down  or  Antrim,  or  Wicklow  or  Cork; 
but  to  lose  everything  in  order  to  accommodate  the  descendants  of 
tlie  "Old  English,"  of  the  men  who  had  ever  been  the  bitterest  foes 
of  Irish  nationality,  was  unendurable. 

So,  there  were  bitter  heart-burnings  between  the  new-comers  and 
tlie  Connaught  men  themselves.  This,  however,  was  only  the  lightest 
hardship  both  had  to  bear. 

The  more  favored  transplanters  who  had  settled  down  at  first  in 
some  of  the  more  fertile  districts,  and  had  there  begun  to  build  and 
to  plant  and  to  provide  against  all  future  need,  were  soon  ordered  to 
remove  to  another  place,  when  Government,  yielding  to  the  violent 
pressure  of  the  "land-hungry,"  took  from  the  Canaanite  idolaters 
the  portions  allotted  to  them,  and  drove  them  out  further  into  the 
barren  wilderness. 

Woe  to  the  transplanter  who  had  saved  money  or  other  valuables 
from  the  wreck  of  his  fortune.  The  long  chain  of  officials  through 
whose  hands  he  had  to  pass,  from  the  Commissioners  at  Loughrea 
and  their  subalterns,  to  the  toll-gatherers  at  the  fords  of  the  Shan- 
non, to  the  surveyors  who  marked  out  his  assigned  lands,  and  the 
officers  who  installed  him  in  his  new  homestead, — all  liad  to  be 
bribed.  If  he  had  no  money,  no  valuables,  a  part  of  the  lands 
assigned  to  him  must  be  given  over  to  the  surveyor  or  to  the  officials 
who  watched  over  the  peace  of  the  district,  and  on  whose  breath,  not 
unfrequently,  hung  the  life  or  death  of  the  poor  hunted,  heart-broken 
wayfarers. 

"The  Cootes,  the  Kings,  the  Binghams,  the  Coles,  the  St. 
Georges,  the  Ormsbys,  the  Gores,  the  Lloyds  having  thus  defranded 
transplanters  of  part  of  their  lots,  bought  up  the  remnant  at  two 
shillings  and  sixpence,  and  three  shillings  per  acre,  and  at  the 
utmost,  five  shillings.  j\Iajor  Byrne,  having  a  decree  from  Athlone 
for  2,000  acres,  gave  Sir  James  Cuffe,  one  of  the  officers  of  transplan- 


364  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

tation  at  Longlirea,  two  liundred  for  obtaining  his  assistance  in  pro- 
curing the  remainder.  ...  Or  tlie  officer  purchase  the  Athlone 
decree  for  a  song,  and  then  got  his  brother  officers  to  set  him  out 
larger  scopes  than  the  transplanter  was  entitled  to."  * 

How  did  these  multitudes  of  men,  women,  and  children  house 
themselves  and  find  sufficient  food  amid  all  the  difficulties  of  their 
new  abode  ? 

One  noble  lady, — the  wife  of  Sir  Luke  Fitzgerald,  from  Tieroghan 
Castle,  Meath,  wrote  on  June  13,  1655,  "that  all  the  gentry  were 
transplanted,  and  fain  to  live  under  the  air,  or  in  such  barracks  as 
her  correspondent  had  at  Ballinakill  in  the  siege  time."  f 

Dr.  French,  Bishop  of  Ferns,  whose  letters  about  Wexford  have 
already  been  quoted,  says:  "Many  opulent  persons  of  good  quality; 
yea,  and  many  of  them  peers  and  lords  of  the  realm,  were  lodged  in 
smoky  cabins,  and,  as  might  well  be  said,  buried  there,  and  starved 
to  death  with  their  wives  and  children." 

The  Government  vainly  ordered  the  Loughrea  Commissioners  to 
give  the  first  transplanters  good  lands  and  good  accommodation,  for 
the  purpose  of  encouraging  others  to  follow,  and  thus  to  expedite  the 
work.  The  very  first  who  came,  however,  were,  in  direct  violation  of 
the  order,  assigned  the  Baronies  of  Burren  and  Incliiquin  in  the 
county  Clare,  famed  for  their  sterility. 

Then,  as  the  work  went  on,  and  the  despairing  transplanters,  to 
avoid  hanging  or  transportation  and  slavery,  hurried  toward  their 
Siberia,  intolerable  hardships  and  delays  awaited  them. 

So  great  was  the  land-hunger,  so  loud  and  furious  the  clamor  of 
the  multitudes  possessed  with  it,  and  so  firmly  set  was  the  purpose 
J  of  the  various  Committees  in  Ireland  charged  with  the  transplanting, 
— that  the  Irish  Papists  should  be  rooted  out, — that  no  favor  was 
shown  even  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  Munster  towns,  who  had  been 
most  faithful  to  England,  and  had  suffered  most  for  their  fidelity. 
A  Court  sate  at  Mallow  to  pass  on  the  "qualifications"  of  these  suf- 


*  "  Cromwellian  Conquest,"  p.  151;  where  he  quotes  the  original  documents  in 
the  Record  Tower,  Dublin  Castle,  t  Ibid. 


The  Irish  desj^air  of  Ireland.  365 

ferers;  one  of  the  Judges  was  the  notorious  Eegicide  Cooke,  who,  of 
course,  was  resolved  to  transplant  or  transport  every  individual  Papist 
brought  before  him. 

"Upon  mature  consideration,"  writes  this  worthy,  and  his  com- 
peers on  the  bench  of  injustice,  to  the  Government,  "upon  mature 
consideration  (so  far  as  the  Lord  hath  enabled  us)  we  have  proceeded 
to  judgment  in  the  causes  depending  before  us,  and  have  not  ad- 
judged constant  good  affection  to  any  one  of  the  claimants;  but  the 
law  will  be  clear  for  most  of  them  to  have  two  parts  in  Connaught. 
.  .  .  We  spared  no  pains  to  distinguish  the  merits  of  each  case;  and 
as  we  were  selecting  ten  or  twenty  that  might  best  pretend  to  be 
legally  restored  to  their  own  estates,  the  next  claimants  had  instantly 
as  much  to  say  for  themselves;  and  when  we  had  named  and  weighed 
about  eighty-six  cases,  .  .  .  presently  the  claimants'  counsel  named 
others  to  us,  which  we  in  our  reason  could  not  deny  but  that  they  did 
equally  merit  with  the  rest,  so,  &c.  .  .  .  They  make  great  as- 
severations that  they  dare  not  go  into  Connaught  for  fear  of  their 
lives,  and  that  they  had  rather  be  sent  to  the  Barbadoes.  .  .  ." 

The  Court  sitting  at  Mallow  (by  exception)  and  permanently  at 
Athlone,  and  over  which  John  Cooke  presided,  was  thus  deciding  the 
fate  of  Ireland  and  of  the  Irish  race. 

Can  the  reader  form  to  himself  a  picture,  or  any  adequate  con- 
ception of  the  misery  and  sufferings  of  an  entire  people  thus,  literally, 
disinherited,  despoiled,  and  driven  by  their  armed  enemies  into  exile, 
poverty,  exposure  to  the  inclemency  of  the  seasons,  and  often  into 
starvation;  and,  all  the  while,  the  inhuman  wretches  who  had  robbed, 
ruined,  and  driven  them  out  of  house,  home,  and  native  land,  quoting 
the  Bible  in  justification  of  their  barbarity,  blaspheming  God's  name 
and  insulting  His  goodness,  by  pretending  to  be  doing  His  work,  a 
righteous  and  godly  work,  by  exterminating,  starving  to  death,  or 
enslaving  a  Christian  people  ? 

"With  such  spectacles  daily  and  hourly  before  their  eyes,  it  is  no 
wonder  that  the  transplanted  who  could  find  means  to  fly,  or  were 
not  tied  by  large  families  of  children,  sold  their  assignments  for  A 


366  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

mere  trifle  to  the  officers  of  government,  and  fled  in  horror  and  aver- 
sion from  the  scene,  and  embarked  for  Spain.  Some  went  mad;  as 
Christopher  Eustace,  of  the  countv  of  Kildare,  restored  to  his  estate, 
at  the  King's  restoration,  as  '  Mad  Eustace '  (for  though  he  recovered 
his  estate,  he  never  recovered  his  wits);  others  killed  themselves  like 
Molly  Hore,  wife  of  Philip  Hore  of  Kilsallaghan  Castle,  seven  miles 
north  of  Dublin,  who,  on  getting  the  summons  to  transplant  to  Con- 
naught,  went  down  to  her  stable  and  hanged  herself.  Others  lived 
on  and  founded  families  in  their  Final  Settlement  which  subsist  to 
this  day,  like  some  of  the  Talbots  and  the  Cheevers." 

So  much  for  the  Irish  Catholics  of  noble  or  of  gentle  blood. 
Among  these  few,  if  an}",  bearing  Celtic  patronymics  had,  apparently, 
been  left  among  the  exiled  multitudes.  They  had  been  lavish  of 
their  lives  on  the  battle-field;  and  the  sword  of  the  Parliamentarian 
drank  their  blood  greedily  when  the  fury  of  battle  had  spared  them 
and  fortune  betrayed  them  into  the  hands  of  the  foe.  So  many  of 
them  were  serying  abroad,  drowning  their  sorrows  in  the  intoxication 
of  glorious  warfare,  or  forgetting  them  awhile  in  the  splendor  of  for- 
eign courts.  Others,  at  home,  wandered  outlawed  among  bogs,  and 
woods,  and  mountain  fastnesses.  Little  chance  had  they  even  to 
obtain  the  dubious  favor  of  transplantation,  or  of  hiding  their  dis- 
tinction b}'  mixing  with  the  common  herd.  At  this  distance  in  time 
from  these  fearful  days,  we,  tlie  descendants  of  that  persecuted  race, 
have  no  idea  of  the  admirable  system  organized  by  our  oppressors,  for 
distinguishing,  as  they  passed  the  military  garrisons,  the  court  of 
Athlone,  the  Commissioners'  Office  in  Roscrea,  the  fords  across  the 
Shannon,  and  the  innumerable  posts  along  every  road  to  their  re- 
spective "assignments," — every  man,  woman,  and  child  from  each 
other  and  their  neighbors. 

Thank  God,  some  of  the  Records  of  these  transactions  still  exist, 
to  be  published  in  full,  when  the  Irish  people  are  the  masters  of  their 
own  destinies  and  the  possessors  of  their  own  native  land. 

But  what  was  the  fate,  what  were  the  sufferings,  of  that  "common 
herd,"  that  mass  of  Celts,  whose  lives  were  accounted  as  of  far  less 


What  became  of  the  real  Celts  ?  36T 

value  than  that  of  the  animals  the}'  drove  before  them  toward  the 
pastures  of  Connaught?  What  befell  them  and  their  brother-Celts 
of  Connaught,  when  thus  "packed"  and  enclosed  in  that  narrow 
penn  between  the  Shannon  and  the  sea  ? 

They  suffered,  they  kept  the  faith,  they  put  their  trust  in  the 
God  of  their  fathers, — the  God  mighty  and  powerful  to  save;  they 
hoped  against  hope;  and  rose  superior  to  every  trial  of  their  endur- 
ance, their  courage,  and  their  constancy.  They  still  live,- — this  peo- 
ple of  confessors  and  martyrs,  this  nation  still  striving  after  the 
fulness  of  its  nationhood  with  all  the  energy  of  a  spirit,  which  no 
suffering  has  quelled  or  appalled,  and  which  gathers  strength  as  it 
moves  on  towards  the  goal,  like  the  St.  Lawrence  around  Montreal, 
when  the  rapids  are  past,  and  all  is  peaceful  and  smooth,  moving 
majestically  and  resistlessly  onward  to  the  Ocean. 

I  repeat  the  words  of  Vincent  Gookin,  addressed  to  the  English 
Parliament  of  1655:  "When  Avill  this  wild  war  of  English  unreason 
and  injustice  toward  the  Irish  people  be  finished?  When  will  Ireland 
be  planted  with  those  acts  of  simple  equit}',  those  institutions  in  con- 
formity with  enlightened  freedom  and  Christian  civilization,  which 
will  bring  forth  lasting  fruits  of  order  and  peace,  instead  of  being 
sown  all  over  with  these  seeds  of  inveterate  wrong,  which,  with  every 
spring-tide,  appear  above  the  earth  threatening  a  harvest  of  crime, 
disaster,  and  national  calamity?  'The  unsettling  of  a  nation  is  easy 
work;  the  settling  is  not.     The  opportunity  for  it  is  not  always.     It 

IS  STOW.'" 

Here  in  our  free  America,  where  men  are  not  afraid  to  weigh  the 
cause  of  nations  in  the  scales  of  impartial  justice,  I  appeal  even  to  the 
descendants  of  the  Puritans,  not  only  in  Xew  England,  but  all  over 
the  Union.  Have  you,  have  the  English  race  in  Great  Britain,  ever 
reflected  seriously  on  the  enormous,  the  unjustifiable,  the  incredible 
wrong  committed  by  the  entire  English  people  on  those  of  the  Sister 
Island  ? 

By  what  singular  providence  did  it  happen  that  the  appeals  made 
by  the  Commonwealth  to  Protestants  of  every  foreign  nation,  even  to 


368  The  Cause,  of  Ireland. 

the  Hussites  of  Bohemia,  to  colonize  the  other  three  Provinces  of 
Ireland,  conld  find  no  response  there?  And,  more  singular  still, 
why  were  not  the  Puritans  of  IS'ew  England,  so  earnestly,  so  patheti- 
cally appealed  to,  induced  to  return  and  share  with  the  English 
adventurers  and  soldiers,  the  empty  homesteads  of  Ulster,  Leinster, 
and  Munster, — the  fair  and  fertile  ploughlands  of  the  Green  Isle, 
and  the  comfortable  habitations  in  the  almost  tenantless  cities  ? 

The  effort  of  Government  and  People  aimed  at  establishing  there 
a  Protestant  nation.  The  Papist  transplanters  in  Connaught  would, 
they  reasonably  hoped,  be  so  hemmed  in,  so  thinned  by  suffering,  so 
divided  by  intermingling  with  the  "superior  race,"  and  coming  nearer 
to  the  light  of  a  "purer  religion,"  soon  become  English  in  speech, 
manners,  and  creed. 

As  the  "Settlement"  of  Ireland  w^ent  on,  besides  the  purely  Eng- 
lish Colony  contemplated  between  tlie  Barrow  and  the  Boyne,  and 
the  purely  Irish  imprisoned  in  Connaught,  there  was  planned  a  mixed 
one  in  the  intermediate  counties;  but  this  was  to  be  a  regular  prose- 
lytizing school.  "In  this  mixed  plantation  no  transplantable  persons 
were  to  be  taken  as  tenants  or  servants,  and  only  such  Irish  as  should 
be  in  each  case  specially  authorized  by  the  State.  The  landlords  Avere 
to  be  bound  to  make  them  speak  English  within  a  limited  time;  and 
their  children  were  to  be  taught  no  Irish:  they  were  to  observe  the 
manners  of  the  English  in  their  habits  and  deportment  wherein  the 
English  exceeded  them.  Their  children  were  to  be  brought  up  under 
English  Protestant  school-masters;  they  were  to  attend  the  public 
preaching  of  Protestant  ministers;  they  were  to  abandon  their  Irish 
names  of  Teig,  and  Dermot,  and  the  like,  and  to  call  themselves  by 
the  significance  of  such  names  in  English;  and  for  the  future  were  to 
name  their  children  with  English  names,  especially  omitting  the  (0') 
and  (Mc);  and,  lastly,  should  build  their  houses  with  chimneys  as 
English  in  like  capacity  do,  and  demean  themselves  in  their  lodging 
and  other  deportments  accordingly."* 

*  "  The  Cromwellian  Settlement,"  pp.  247,  248  ;  where  the  author  quotes 
Colonel  Lawrence's  "  The  great  Interest  of  England  in  the  Well  Planting  of  Ire- 
land with  English  People,"  1656. 


New  EiKjland  Puritans  invited  to  Ireland.  369 

They  purposed  doing  thoroughly  "the  work"  of  "converting"  the 
Irish  remnant  to  Enghsh  ways  in  rehgion  as  in  all  else,  since  all 
methods  of  extermination  had  only  had  a  partial  success.  Looking 
back  to  the  year  of  calamity  1652,  when  God  and  men  seemed  to 
have  forsaken  the  Catholic  Irish,  we  cannot  help  a  feeling  of  sadness 
as  we  try  to  conceive  how  dark  and  despairing  was  the  prospect  before 
them,  and  a  feeling  of  unspeakable  gratitude  that  He  for  whom  they 
suffered  did  not  fail  them  in  their  trust. 

With  what  exultation  those  who  admired  Cromwell  and  were  in 
sympathy  with  his  methods  of  propagating  the  Gospel,  looked  on  the 
desperate  plight  to  which  Popery  in  Ireland  had  been  reduced! 

"The  expectation  of  this  day,"  said  one  of  these,  in  dedicating  a 
book  on  Ireland  to  the  Lord  Protector,  and  the  Lord  Deputy  Fleet- 
wood, "is  the  hope  of  Israel.  I  look  somewhat  upon  the  hopeful 
appearance  of  replanting  Ireland  shortly,  not  only  by  Adventurers, 
but  haply  by  the  calling  in  of  exiled  Bohemians  and  other  Protestants 
also,  but  liaply  by  the  invitation  of  some  well-affected  out  of  the  Low 
Countries."*  The  Act  of  Sept.  1653,  gave  to  all  foreign  Protestants 
the  rights  of  citizenship  in  Ireland.  In  1651  the  Commissioners  for 
Ireland  urged  the  famous  New  England  Puritan  Preacher,  Harrison, 
to  come  back  to  Ireland,  and  sow  the  good  seed  in  its  soil.  Then 
going  back  to  America,  he  might  encourage  his  brethren  there  to 
return  to  their  native  country  and  settle  in  Ireland.  Harrison  did 
not  or  could  not  respond  to  the  invitation.  In  1655,  however,  pro- 
posals were  made  and  accepted  for  colonizing  Sligo  and  its  neighbor- 
hood. In  1656  several  families  from  New  England  came  to  Limerick 
and  were  located  on  State  lands  at  Garristown,  near  Dublin. 

The  providence  of  God  had  reserved  another  and  a  far  more  glori- 
ous mission  to  the  New  England  Colonies. 

Meanwhile  the  imperious  need  of  human  aid  in  their  labors, — per- 
haps of  human  companionship  in  the  waste  which  surrounded  them, 
— made  the  planters  of  the  North  and  the  South  of  Ireland  overlook 

*  "  Ireland's  Natural  History,"  by  Gerard  Boate.    4to.  London,  1652. 
24 


370  TTie  Cause  of  Ireland. 

all  legal  enactments,  and  invite  the  Creaghts  and  otlier  Irish  wander- 
ers to  help  them  till  the  ground.  The  officers  and  soldiers  who  had 
been  a  long  time  in  Ireland,  now  that  the  conflict  was  ended,  and 
that  their  land-hunger  was  appeased  by  possession,  felt  their  preju- 
dices and  a  little  of  their  fanaticism  falling  away  from  them.  Not 
only  did  they  tolerate,  first,  and  then  court  the  neighborhood  and 
companionship  of  the  banned  Irish,  but  intermarried  with  them. 
And  things  went  so  far,  that  in  1651  Ireton  forbade  such  marriages 
under  the  severest  penalties  to  the  soldier.  In  1652  the  marriage  of 
an  officer  or  a  soldier  with  an  Irishwoman  was  made  punishable  by 
loss  of  rank,  arrears,  and  title  to  any  land  or  inheritance  in  Ireland. 
All  these  pi'ohibitions  produced  only  a  very  partial  and  temporary 
effect.  There  has  ever  been,  so  far  as  history  can  go  back  to  describe 
the  manners  and  morals  of  the  Irish  people,  a  purity,  a  simplicity,  and 
withal  a  heartiness  and  hospitality  about  them  in  social  intercourse, 
— which  cannot  fail  to  impress  and  captivate  even  the  most  hostile. 

So,  by  degrees,  the  Irish,  in  spite  of  all  legal  penalties,  became 
mixed  up  with  the  English  settlers, — the  Creaghts  as  farm-servants 
and  herdsmen,  the  cultivators  as  tenants-at-wdll,  and  the  former  pro- 
prietors, in  their  fond  attachment  to  the  patrimonial  estate,  often 
consenting  to  accept  the  privilege  of  living  there  in  the  same  capacity 
of  tenants,  and  of  cultivating  a  few  of  the  acres  of  their  former  broad 
domain. 

All  this  happened  in  direct  violation  of  the  will  of  both  the  Eng- 
lish and  the  Irish  Governments.  This  was  done  more  openly  in  Mun- 
ster.  The  rigorous  Acts  regulating  transplantation  were  again  and 
again  enforced,  as  we  shall  see  presently.  But  still  the  Irish 
prevailed. 

How  did  it  fare  with  the  purely  English  Colony,  situated  within 
the  territory  bounded  by  tlie  Boyne  and  the  Barrow  ?  After  a  time, 
the  Government  feeling  sure  that  no  Irish  did  or  could  inhabit  the 
country  north  of  Dublin,  between  the  Liffey  and  the  Boyne,  limited 
their  scheme  to  the  Five  Counties, — that  part  of  Dublin  County 
south  of  the  Liffey,  together  with  Wicklow,  Wexford,  Kildare,  and 


The  Irish  Papists  ordered  out  of  the  Pale.  371 

Carlow.  On  July  17,  1654,  it  was  ordered  that  all  this  territory 
should  be  "wholly  transplanted  of  Irish  Papists,"  by  May  1,  1655,  on 
pain  of  all  such  persons  found  therein  after  that  date  being  taken  as 
spies,  and  dealt  with  according  to  martial  law. 

It  was  thus  intended  to  use  no  half-measures  in  ridding  this 
favored  territory  of  the  hated  race  and  religion.  The  English  pro- 
prietors, old  and  new,  protested.  They  were  given  a  hearing  before 
the  Privy  Council  in  Dublin  on  February  19,  1655.  The  land  could 
not  be  tilled  without  the  Irish.  A  committee  was  appointed  to 
examine  and  determine  which  parts  in  the  Counties  should  be  totally 
cleared  of  Irish;  in  which  parts  Irish,  who  were  neither  proprietors 
nor  swordsmen,  might  be  tolerated.  But  the  general  order  w^as 
not  withdrawn.  Delay  after  delay  occurred.  It  was  hoped  that 
tenants  and  farm-laborers  would  come  from  England.  None  came, 
however.  At  length  a  special  commission  was  appointed  to  regulate 
the  matter  and  to  lay  down  stringent  conditions  regarding  such  Irish 
as  were  thus  to  be  retained. 

The  proprietor  bound  himself  to  make,  within  six  months, 
Protestants  of  all  transplantable  persons  kept  in  his  service,  and  the 
Government  was  to  be  satisfied  that  the  change  of  religion  was  no 
feigned  one.  The  converts  were  to  hear  the  Lord's  Word  in  the 
meeting-house  every  Lord's  Day,  if  such  meeting-house  were  within 
four  miles;  every  other  Lord's  Day,  if  within  six  miles;  if  further, 
once  a  month.  Their  children  were  to  learn  the  catechism  in  the 
English  tongue,  without  book,  and  as  taught  by  the  mhiister.  But 
the  Government, — says  Mr.  Prendergast, — seems  to  have  forgotten 
the  naming  the  children  with  English  names;  and.  the  chimneys, 
and  the  English  deportment  in  houses,  lodging,  and  manners, 
wherein  the  English  exceeded  them.  But  probably  there  was  about 
as  much  use  in  the  one  as  the  other.  The  landlords  w^anted  their 
labor,  and  not  English  piety,  or  Anglo-Saxon  elegance.  For  though 
the  letter  of  one  of  the  officers  remains,  requesting  the  prayers  of 
their  friends,  that  now  they  had  come  to  possess  houses  they  had  not 
built,  and  vineyards  they  had  not  planted,  they  might  not  forget  the 


372  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Lord  and  His  goodness  to  them  in  the  day  of  their  distress;  one  that 
knew  them  well  a  few  years  later  said,  he  had  hunted  with  them, 
diced  with  them,  drunk  with  them,  and  fought  with  them,  but  had 
never  prayed  with  them;  and  another,  that  an  Irish  Protestant  was 
a  man  who  ate  meat  on  a  Friday,  and  hated  a  Papist. 

During  the  remaining  years  of  the  Commonwealth,  if  the  Govern- 
ment perforce  connived  at  the  retention  of  Irish  Papists  on  some 
points  of  the  Desert  the  Sword,  the  Bible,  and  Transplantation  had 
created, — it  was  only  on  conditions  like  those  just  mentioned,  of 
forcing  the  exempted  persons  to  apostatize.  Apparently,  their  suc- 
cess in  this  respect  was  very  limited. 

But,  before  quitting  this  portion  of  our  subject,  let  us  glance  at 
this  Desert  over  which  Cromwell  and  his  lieutenants  ruled  in  Ireland. 

1.    The  Story  of  Connaiight. 

We  have  not  dared  to  draw  a  truthful  picture  of  Connaught 
during  the  two  or  three  first  years  after  the  Act  of  Transplantation 
was  enforced.  We  believe, — and  in  this  we  are  borne  out  by  the 
concurrent  testimony  of  the  eye-witnesses  and  contemporaries  of 
the  events  we  have  just  been  narrating, — that  nothing  but  the 
divinest  consolations  of  Eeligion  in  the  very  extremity  of  ill,  noth- 
ing but  the  most  heroic  charity  of  the  Irish  bishops  and  priests 
clinging  with  invincible  constancy  to  their  persecuted  flocks, — could 
have  prevented  Connaught,  under  the  circumstances  here  described, 
from  becoming  a  hell  upon  earth,  and  the'  grave  as  well  of  the  Irish 
nationality. 

AYho  knows  but  some  one  of  the  sons  of  Ireland  now  living, 
catching  the  inspiration  which  has  produced  such  works  as  the 
"  Cromwelhan  Settlement,"  will  undertake  the  history  of  the  Prov- 
ince during  the  dark  days  of  the  Commonwealth  and  down  to  the 
landing  of  the  French  at  Killala.  What  a  narrative — surpassing  in 
tragic  interest  and  equalling  in  sublime  moral  instruction  the  Exodus 
of  Moses — would  be  the  story,  not  only  of  what  the  despoiled  Irish 
endured  on  their  way  to  Connaught,  but  the  untold  and  unspeakable 


What  prophetic  Vision  may  have  gladdened  St.  Patrick  dying.    373 

trials  endured  there  !  Travelers  now-a-days  seek  pleasant  recreation 
and  healthful  exercise  in  visiting  the  grand  and  romantic  scenery  of 
the  western  sea-coast  from  the  mouth  of  the  Shannon  to  the  Bay 
of  Donegal.  Artists  roam  over  its  broad  estuaries  and  beautiful 
lakes,  its  weird  and  picturesque  mountain- scenery,  to  gather  there 
both  inspiration  and  the  materials  for  their  pencil.  Tlie  lakes  and 
mountains,  the  cities  and  hamlets  of  Palestine  in  the  age  of  Mattha- 
thias  the  Macchabee  and  his  heroic  sons,  never  beheld  such  religious 
heroism,  such  touching  self-sacrifice  to  God,  to  country,  to  the  dear 
love  of  kindred  and  race, — as  hallowed  and  illumined  every  portion 
of  that  Province,  so  deserving  of  the  eternal  veneration  of  Irish- 
men. 

St.  Patrick,  his  most  authorized  biographers  say,  spent  the  entire 
Lenten  Season  in  solitude,  fasting,  and  prayer,  on  the  lofty  summit 
of  the  mountain  that  bears  his  name,  and  which  dominates  the  glo- 
rious expanse  of  Clew  Bay,  with  its  clusters  of  islands.  Evil  spirits 
in]iumerable,  some  times  appearing  as  flocks  of  dusky  birds,  disturbed 
the  saint  in  his  devotions.  What  were  the  prophetic  visions  which 
God  vouchsafed  to  His  great  servant  in  these  solitary  meditations,  and 
while  the  Evil  One  thus  intruded  upon  his  solitude?  Were  the  tears 
he  shed  there,  and  the  fervent  prayers  poured  forth  night  and  day  by 
this  spiritual  parent  of  the  Irish  race,  caused  by  seeing,  not  so  much 
the  combined  efforts  of  the  spirits  of  darkness  to  prevent  the  conver- 
sion of  the  nation -from  idolatry, — but  by  having  revealed  to  him  the 
frightful  slaughter  and  persecutions  of  this  faithful  people  at  the 
period  we  have  been  describing? 

The  great  Hebrew  Prophet  and  Liberator  poured  forth  a  magnifi- 
cent hymn  of  thanksgiving  as  he  beheld  his  people  united  and  victo- 
rious beneath  him,  within  sight  of  the  Promised  Land,  and  then 
ascended  the  mountain  top  to  yield  his  spirit  to  the  Creator.  I  ask 
myself  if  the  victories  of  Israel  over  Edom,  and  Moab,  and  Canaan, 
were  more  glorious  to  the  Hebrew  race,  than  is  to  the  Irish  people 
their  having  outlived  the  tremendous  ordeals  we  have  enumerated, 
and  preserved  their  faith  in  God  and  their  undying  hopes  of  freedom 


374  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

and  nationality  through  the  centuries  spent  in  the  furnace  and  the 
flame. 

To  bishops  like  Nicholas  French,  hunted  like  a  wild  beast  through 
wood  and  bog  and  mountain  wild,  and  living  for  months  and  years 
without  secure  cover  or  shelter, — what  a  spectacle  was  that  of  these 
multitudes  pouring  into  Connaught,  and  seeking  with  weary  feet  and 
sinking  hearts  some  corner  of  earth  to  rest  and  die  upon,  as  they 
looked  up  to  Him  who  is  the  Judge  of  the  whole  earth  ?  And  to  the 
heroic  priests,  who,  under  a  hundred  disguises,  attended  the  trans- 
planted emigrants  on  the  road,  braving  the  ever-watchful  eyes  and 
pitiless  steel  of  their  military  guards,  to  minister  more  than  a  cup  of 
cold  water  to  wayfarers  through  the  sandy  desert, — sweet  words  of 
fatherly,  brotherly  consolation  to  the  fainting  spirit,  the  sacramental 
graces  of  religion  to  hearts  athirst  for  supernatural  strength  amid 
trials  surpassing  the  utmost  endurance  of  nature, — what  a  sight  were 
these  provinces  through  which  their  road  lay  westward  ! 

3.  The  Wilderness  outside  of  Connaught. 
"Ireland,  in  the  language  of  Scripture,  now  lay  void  as  a  wilder- 
ness. Five-sixths  of  her  people  had  perished.  Women  and  children 
were  daily  found  perishing  in  ditches,  starved.  The  bodies  of  many 
wandering  orphans,*  whose  fathers  had  embarked  for  Spain,  and 
whose  mothers  had  died  of  famine,  were  preyed  upon  by  wolves. 
In  the  years  1G52  and  1653,  the  plague  and  famine  had  swept 
away  whole  counties,  that  a  man  might  travel  twenty  or  thirty 
miles,  and  not  see  a  living  creature.  Man,  beast,  and  bird 
were   all   dead,  or  had   quit  these   desolate   places.      The  troopers 

*  Mr,  Prendergastliere  adds  this  note  taken  from  the  oric^inal  document  in  Dub- 
lin Castle:  "  Upon  serious  consideration  (say  the  Lords  of  the  Privy  Council)  had 
of  the  great  miiltitudes  of  poore  swarming  in  all  parts  of  this  nacion,  occasioned  by 
the  devastation  of  the  country,  and  by  the  habits  of  licentiousness  and  idleness 
■which  the  generality  of  the  people  have  acquired  in  the  time  of  this  rebellion;  inso- 
much that  some  are  found  frequently  feeding  on  carrion  and  weeds — some  starved  in 
the  highways,  and  many  times  poor  children  who  lost  their  parents,  or  have  been 
deserted  by  them,  are  found  exposed  to,  and  some  of  them  fed  upon  by,  ravening 
wolves  and  other  beasts  and  birds  of  prey."  Printed  Declaration  of  Council,  12th 
May,  1653. 


A   Voice  crying,  '"'' Out  with  the  Priests!"  375 

would  tell  stories  of  the  place  Avliere  they  saw  a  smoke, — it  was 
so  rare  to  see  either  smoke  by  day,  or  fire  or  candle  by  night. 
If  two  or  tliree  cabins  wore  met  with,  there  were  found  there 
none  but  aged  men,  with  women  and  children;  and  they,  in  the 
words  of  the  prophet,  'become  as  a  bottle  in  the  smoke;  their 
skins  black  like  an  oven,  because  of  the  terrible  famine.'  They  were 
seen  to  pluck  carrion  out  of  a  ditch,  black  and  rotten;  and  were  said 
to  have  even  taken  corpses  out  of  the  grave  to  eat.  .  .  .  Such  was 
the  depopulation  of  Ireland,  that  great  part  of  it,  it  was  believed, 
must  lie  waste  many  years — much  for  many  ages."  * 

"Okder  por  banishing  all  Priests. 

"  Whereas,  it  is  now  manifest  from  many  years'  experience  that 
Jesuits,  Seminary  Priests,  and  Persons  in  Popish  Orders  in  Ireland, 
estrange  the  affections  of  the  people  from  due  obedience  to  the  Eng- 
lish Commonwealth,  and  under  pretence  of  Religion  excite  them  to 
rebellion,  which  gave  rise  to  the  barbarous  murders  of  IGI^l  and  the 
destructive  war  ivhich  followed.  And  whereas  many  persons  who  ob- 
tained leave  to  transport  themselves  beyond  the  seas  do  nevertheless 
delay  their  departure.  Now,  that  such  persons  may  have  no  further 
opportunity  of  leading  people  astray,  from  which  no  ordinary 
admonition  can  witlihold  them,  though  they  thus  expose  their  lives 
to  danger,  and  threaten  to  ruin  this  miserable  nation,  they  are  all  to 
withdraw  in  twenty  days;  but  outstaying  this  time,  or  returning  after 
they  have  once  Avithdrawn,  they  will  be  subjected  to  the  penalties  of 
the  27th  Elizabeth.     Given  at  Dublin,  Gth  January,  1652-3. 

'"''Signed,        Charles  Fleetwood,       Edmund  Ludlow, 
Miles  Corbet,  John  Johnes." 


*  The  utter  waste  and  desolation  of  the  country  is  truthfully  described  by  the 
English  writers  who  traveled  through  it  at  the  time;  and  some  of  whom,  like 
Colonel  Lawrence,  had  been  active  in  causing  all  this  ruin.  As  to  the  horrors 
imputed  here  to  the  famished  Irish,  and  one  appalling  instance  of  which,  taken 
from  Lawrence's  work,  is  described  in  the  text, — they  are  related  for  a  very  different 
purpose.  The  country  is  described  as  waste  and  desolate  to  tell  the  English  that 
they  may  come  to  inhabit  it  without  fearing  an  enemy;  the  hoiTible  feasts  of  the 
famine-stricken  are  designed  to  make  the  Irish  hateful. 


376  The  Cause  of  Ir&land. 

So  it  was  THE  Priest  who  had  incited  to  rebellion  and  massacre; 
who  had  caused  the  terrible  war  lasting  eleven  years;  who  had  de- 
populated, wasted,  and  ruined  the  land. 

The  men  who  governed  at  Dublin  in  Cromwell's  place,  lift  their 
voices  in  solemn  proclamation,  amid  that  howling  wilderness  where 
the  wolf  feeds  on  the  corpses  of  the  famished  widows  and  orphans  of 
the  slain,  and  the  outlawed  and  luuited  Papists  are  driven  by  the 
rabid  pangs  of  starvation  to  feed  on  herbs,  on  carrion,  on .  .  .  (But, 
no!);  and  they  dare  to  say  before  the  High  God  and  the  civilized 
world,  that  Cromwell  is  not  to  blame  for  all  this  destruction  and  des- 
olation; that  they,  who  have  poured  out  human  blood  like  the  waters 
of  the  Liffey,  are  not  to  blame;  that  the  Lords  Justices  Parsons  and 
Borlase,  who  sate  in  that  Council  Chamber  before  them,  did  not  plot 
and  plan  there  rebellion,  and  massacre,  and  civil  war,  and  the  utter 
extermination  of  the  Irish  people;  and  command,  through  their 
Cootes,  and  St.  Legers,  and  Broghills,  and  Inchiquins,  and  Tich- 
bornes,  the  destri,iction  and  desolation  "by  fire  and  sword"  without 
sparing  man,  woman,  or  child,  of  the  country  around  thera  from  sea 
to  sea. 

It  is  the  Priest  who  has  slain,  and  ruined,  and  desolated! 

So,  as  they  must  now  hunt  the  Wolf  lest  he  prey  upon  the  living, 
and,  having  nothing  to  feed  on  in  the  uninhabited  country  places,  he 
may  enter  city  and  town  and  attack  man,  woman,  and  child  of  the 
English;  so  must  they  hunt  the  Priest,  drive  him  from  the  land, 
exterminate  the  whole  brood  of  Jesuits,  Seminary  Priests,  and  all 
clothed  with  "Popish  Orders." 

"Mr.  Justice  John  Cooke  (afterwards  brought  himself  to  the 
scaffold  as  a  regicide)  at  a  general  sessions  held  before  him  at  Clon- 
mel,  cried  aloud  from  the  bench  that  all  Irishmen  living  on  23d 
October,  16-il,  or  l)orn  since  in  Ireland  to  that  same  day,  were  all 
traitors  by  an  order  made  at  Derby  Hoiise."  *     Under  this  measure 


*  "  Memorials  of  the  War  of  1641.    Written  in  the  year  1657,  by  James  Kearney 
of  Fethard,"  p.  4.     "  Carte  Papers,"  vol.  64,  p.  432. 


The  Sogarch  Aroouf  377 

more  than  one  tlioiisand  priests  were  sent  into  exile,  and  amongst 
them  all  the  surviving  bishops  but  one,  the  Bishoj)  of  Kilmore,  who, 
weighed  down  by  age  and  infirmities,  as  he  was  unable  to  perform 
his  functions,  so  too  he  was  unable  to  fly." 

Imprisonment,  tortures,  banishment  to  the  Continent  of  Europe, 
could  not  and  did  not  prevent  the  faithful  Irish  Priests  and  Bishops 
from  returning  to  their  flocks  as  soon  as  a  favorable  opportunity  pre- 
sented itself.  Of  course,  this  was  certain  death  to  them  when  dis- 
covered again  on  Irish  soil.  So,  instead  of  transporting  them,  or 
allowing  them  to  "transport  themselves"  to  Spain  and  Portugal,  to 
France  or  the  Low  Countries, — the  Irish  Government  sent  them  as 
slaves  to  Barbadoes; — not  unwilling  slaves,  however.  These  apostolic 
men  knew  how  many  thousands  of  their  brethren  were  laboring  in 
bondage  there,  deprived  of  all  spiritual  succor,  the  multitudes  of 
young  men  and  women,  especially,  exposed  to  all  the  seductions  of 
proselytism,  and  to  the  unnamable  dangers  inseparable  from  West 
Indian  slavery. 

The  Priests  returned  from  the  Continent  in  such  numbers  in  the 
last  months  of  1G55,  "that  a  general  arrest  by  the  justices  of  the 
peace  was  ordered,  under  which,  in  April,  1656,  the  prisons  in  every 
part  of  Ireland  seem  to  have  been  filled  to  overflowing.  On  3d  of 
May  the  governors  of  the  respective  precincts  were  ordered  to  send 
them  with  sufficient  guards  to  Carrickfergus,  to  be  there  put  on 
board  such  ship  as  should  sail  with  the  first  opportunity  to  the 
Barbadoes." 

But,  in  all  likelihood,  it  was  soon  found  that  in  the  Barbadoes  or 
elsewhere  in  the  West  Indies,  these  slave-missionaries  found  a  most 
fruitful  field  of  labor.  So,  they  must  be  put  where  they  should  have 
no  opportunity  for  exercising  their  priestly  zeal;  and  in  February, 
1657,  it  was  decreed  that  the  priests  in  the  Dublin  prisons  should  be 
sent  to  the  Arran  Islands,  at  the  entrance  to  Galway  Bay,  and  to  the 
Isle  of  Innisboffin,  off  the  coast  of  Connemara.  There  were  strange 
stone  structures  dating  from  prehistoric  times,  which  the  early  Chi-is- 
tian  hermits  and  monks  had  occupied  and  added  to  in  the  days  when 


378  Tlie  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Ireland's  learning  and  Ireland's  holiness  shone  like  twin-beacons 
illumining  the  whole  of  Western  Europe.  Thither  now  were  sent 
these  glorious  confessors  of  the  Faith,  to  sing  together  perpetual 
praise  for  being  allowed  to  suffer  for  His  Name,  and  to  lift  per- 
petually in  Ireland's  behalf  the  hands  that  had  borne  chains  in  her 
cause,  and  ministered  to  the  sorest  needs  of  her  children. 

Far  more  glorious  to  the  Irish  Church  is  the  age  of  the  Martyr 
Oliver  Plunket  than  the  age  of  Columbanus. 

And  what  was  left  of  the  Irish  People  was  not  unworthy  of  such 
noble  teachers,  guides,  and  models.  Other  leading  classes  there  were 
none.  Soldiers  and  nobles  were  in  other  lands.  Every  means  which 
human  ingenuity  could  devise,  or  which  unscrupulous  power  could 
use,  had  been  employed  to  leave  the  impoverished  and  demoralized 
remnants  of  the  people  without  their  natural  leaders; — and  with  sin- 
gular success.  But  the  Irish  people  resembled  those  of  no  other 
European  nation.  They  never  had  been  helots,  or  serfs.  In  the 
ancient  Celtic  society  of  which  they  had  kept  the  spirit  alive,  even 
when  its  forms  fell  away  from  them  one  after  the  other,  the  clans- 
men were,  at  bottom,  brothers  and  equals.  The  Hungarians  and  the 
Basques  most  resembled  the  Irish  in  this.  Wlien,  therefore,  their 
own  ancient  nobility  were  annihilated,  as  a  first  step  toward  breaking 
up  the  clan-organization,  and  when  the  Anglo-Irish  nobles  and 
gentry,  who  had  been  such  powerful  agents  and  instruments  in  so 
breaking  up  our  Celtic  forms,  had,  in  their  turn,  fallen  under  the 
Cromwellian  mace  of  steel, — our  Irish  Creaghts  and  Kerne,  our 
ploughmen,  and  our  shepherds,  as  well  as  what  remained  of  our 
swordmen,  did  not  forsake  themselves.  Their  blood  was  as  good  as 
that  of  O'Neill  or  O'Donnell,  of  O'Reilly  or  Maguire  or  Magennis,  of 
O'Brien  or  O'Connor  or  Mac  Carty:  these  were  only  the  chosen  rep- 
resentatives and  leaders  of  the  Tribes  into  which  the  great  Celtic 
Family  of  Ireland  was  divided.  The  Tribesmen  still  remained, 
although  the  leaders  had  disappeared. 

English  they  would  not,  could  not  be.     Protestants  they  would 
not  be:  the  Reform  preached  by  Luther  and  Calvin  they  needed  not. 


The  Celts  of  1655.  379 

In  spite  of  all  the  evils  and  social  disorder  of  the  Danish  invasions, 
and  of  the  Anglo-Norman  occupation,  the  Celtic  Irish  had  found  in 
the  intellectual  culture  and  moral  conduct  of  their  clergy,  both  secu- 
lar and  regular,  nothing  to  lessen  their  reverence  for  their  sacred 
character,  or  their  confidence  in  them  as  their  religious  guides.  The 
peculiar  doctrines  of  the  Reformers  found  no  sympathetic  echo  in 
their  minds  or  their  hearts.  The  Eeformation,  as  embodied  in  the 
ecclesiastical  and  political  innovations  of  Henry  and  Elizabeth  pro- 
voked the  ridicule,  scorn,  and  contempt  of  a  keen-witted  and 
liberty-loving  race. 

Now  that  the  Reformed  Religion  was  again  presented  to  them  in 
the  mutilated  version  of  the  Bible  dealt  out  to  the  red-handed  troop- 
ers and  pike-men  of  Ireton,  Ludlow,  and  Fleetwood, — their  whole 
soul  revolted  at  the  idea  that  a  religion  so  symbolized,  expounded  by 
the  very  men  who  ordered  the  massacres  of  Drogheda  and  Wexford 
and  Casliel,  could  in  any  wise  resemble  the  loved  teachings  of  Patrick 
and  Columkille  and  Columbanus. 

So,  in  every  man  of  those  whom  the  sword  had  spared  in  Con- 
naught,  or  in  the  multitudes  compelled  to  seek  refuge  in  Connaught 
from  the  other  provinces, — you  had  a  great-souled  man,  who  believed 
with  his  whole  heart  in  God  and  in  Ireland,  and  who  was  resolved, 
come  what  might  of  suffering,  to  hold  fast  till  death  to  this  twofold 
Faith. 

Who  will  not  admire  and  honor  such  men  ? 

Let  a  Protestant  pen  complete  this  portraiture  of  the  Irishmen 
of  1655. 

"Each  of  these  men  bearing  his  great  heart  above  despair,  watched 
for  vengeance  on  the  enemies  of  his  race,  and  waited  for  the  resur- 
rection of  his  country.  They  scorned  the  preaching  of  their  priests 
and  gentry  of  English  blood.  They  knew  them  to  be  as  truly  Eng- 
lish at  heart  as  the  children  of  the  old  Romans,  though  born  in  Brit- 
ain, were  still  Romans.  When  the  only  hope  of  safety  for  both  nat- 
uralized English  and  native  Irish  was  a  union  to  support  Charles  II., 
the  Irish  refused  it.     They  Avould  not  be  parties  to  placing  their 


380  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

country,  as  the  gentry  desired,  under  the  rule  of  a  people  that  for 
ages  had  injured  them  and  scorned  them.  Father  Christopher  Plun- 
ket,  a  friar  of  English  race,  was  employed  as  an  ambassador  to  the 
Irish  party  in  1G50.  He  reported  that  they  would  rather  pull  God 
out  of  His  throne,  or  throw  themselves  headlong  into  the  sea,  than 
become  loyal  to  the  Crown  of  England.  They  knew  that  the  King 
of  England  would  be  the  puppet  of  Parliament.  And  they  had  ever 
known  the  Parliament  as  a  body  of  conspirators  against  the  religion, 
property,  liberties,  good  fame,  and  very  existence  of  the  Irish  people. 

"  The  Irish,  thus  defeated  by  the  overpowering  force  of  England, 
or  rather  by  the  coldness  for  the  contest  of  their  half-hearted  leaders, 
most  of  them  of  the  old  English  blood,  who  feared  the  victory  for  the 
nation  more  than  conquest  by  the  enemy,  now  dispersed  themselves 
in  woods  and  mountains  and  bogs,  and  thence  fell  down  like  wolves 
on  the  usurpers  of  their  homes  and  country.  These  were  the 
Tories."* 

We  quote  Father  Plunket's  words,  while  seriously  questioning 
their  truthfulness  and  accuracy.  It  is  not  likely  that  men  who 
had,  like  their  fathers  before  them  for  many  a  generation,  risked 
and  lost  everything,  rather  than  betray  their  allegiance  to  God, 
would,  under  any  supposition,  express  themselves  as  ready  to  "pull 
God  from  His  throne."  The  truth  with  regard  to  the  ansAver  made 
by  these  much-tried  men  to  the  ambassador  of  a  party,  who  had 
ever  been  the  curse  of  Ireland,  and  whose  half-hearted  cooperation 
or  covert  treachery  had  just  defeated  the  national  effort  toward 
independence, — must  have  been  that  the  placing  of  the  national 
religion,  and  the  political  rights  inseparable  from  it,  in  tlie  power 
of  that  same  Anglo-Irish  party  and  their  Stuart  King,  was  tanta- 
mount to  detbroning  God  in  their  hearts,  and  homes,  and  country. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  no  one  who  reads  the  original  letter  of  Father 
Plunket  but  will  say,  that  he  Avas  one  who  meant  no  good  to  the 
"mere  Irish"  Catholics.      And  they  understood  him  and  rejected 
his  advances  with  a  scorn  and  indignation  Avhich  we  heartily  share. 
*  "  Cromwellian  Couquest,"  pp.  330-32. 


The  Tories  in  the   Wilderness.  381 

So,  tliese  were  the  brave  men,  to  whom  Ormonde  first  and  liis 
party,  and  then  tlie  Parliamentarians,  gave  the  name  of  Tories. 
We  have  jnst  heard  their  voice,  amid  the  desolation  of  Ireland,  and 
the  silence  of  general  despair,  uttering  their  cry  of  defiance  to  the 
all-powerful  conquerors. 

Their  raids  upon  the  English  settlers,  while  the  transplantation 
was  going  on,  served  as  an  additional  pretext  for  exercising  against 
all  the  Catholics  "under  Protection,"  outside  of  Connaught,  the  most 
tyrannical  exactions. 

The  Catholics  were  held  responsible  for  all  the  wild  deeds  of  these 
outlaws.  For  the  property  destroyed  or  carried  away,  or  for  the  lives 
lost  in  the  foray,  all  the  Irish  Catholics  were  assessed  in  the  locality. 
Later,  and  when  these  fines  had  exhausted  the  slender  resources  of 
these  poor  Papists,  the  adjoining  baronies,  those  especially  through 
which  the  Tories  "  had  passed  "  on  their  raid,  were  held  accountable. 
It  was  convenient  to  the  oppressor  to  presume  that  the  outlaws  were 
the  kindred  of  these  Papists,  and  that  these  connived  at,  if  they  did 
not  abet,  their  misdeeds. 

Fining,  like  bloodletting,  has  a  limit;  and  that  limit  was  reached 
at  the  beginning  of  1653.  It  was  ordered  that  as  no  more  money 
could  be  levied  for  these  Tory  depredations,  for  no  more  money  was 
left,  the  "protected  Papists"  of  the  locality  where  the  offence  was 
committed  should  transplant  to  Connaught.  Thus  the  whole  town 
of  Timolin  was  transplanted. 

"The  Irish  had  been  driven,"  the  Government  proclamation  said, 
"from  garrisons,  castles,  and  places  of  strength,  to  bogs  and  woods. 
There  they  lurked,  watching  for  opportunities  to  commit  murders 
and  outrages,  which,  through  the  blessing  of  the  Lord,  might  be 
prevented,  if  the  Irish  inhabitants  of  this  nation  did  not  privately 
succor  them." 

Another  good  reason  for  fresh  and  energetic  measures  of  extermi- 
nation against  these  unteachable,  incorrigible  Irish. 

"For  a  remedy" — Mr,  Prendergast  adds — "four  persons  of  the 
neighborhood  and  of  the  Irish  nation  and  Popish  religion,  were  to  be 


383  The  Cause  of  Irelajid. 

taken,  and  after  twenty-eight  days  transported  to  the  English  planta- 
tions in  America,  if  the  criminals  were  not  previously  amenable;  and 
all  the  Irish  inhabitants  of  the  Popish  religion  in  the  barony  were  to 
be  transplanted,  except  snch  as  conld  prove  their  'constant  good 
affection^  to  the  t3Tants  of  their  country.  But  no  laws  bind,  no 
punishments  can  restrain  outraged  nature.  The  hatred  of  the  Irish 
to  their  tyrants  increased  with  their  increasing  severity."  * 

Two  men,  lately  soldiers  and  in  the  pay  of  the  State,  having  been 
murdered  at  Lackagh  in  Kildare,  while  working  in  the  houses  of 
some  of  the  transplanted,  "all  the  Irish  of  Lackagh  of  the  Popish 
religion  (except  four  who  were  hanged  for  the  benefit  of  the  rest),  to 
the  number  of  thirty-seven — being  three  priests,  twenty-one  women, 
and  thirteen  men,  were,  on  the  27th  Nov.  1655,  delivered  to  Captain 
Coleman,  of  the  '  Wexford '  frigate,  for  transportation  to  the  Barba- 
does.  .  .  .  There  was  (among  them)  the  whole  family  of  Mr.  Henry 
Fitzgerald  of  Lackagh  Castle.  ...  He  and  his  wife  .  .  .  (both  of  the 
House  of  Kildare)  were  fourscore  years  and  upwards.  .  .  .  The 
Tories  too  had  frequently  despoiled  them.  Yet  they,  with  their  son 
Maurice,  their  daughters  Margery  and  Bridget,  Mary,  the  widow  of 
their  oldest  son,  Henry,  with  their  man  servant  and  maid  servant, 
had  to  lie  in  prison  till  the  ship  could  be  got  ready  to  carry  them 
with  the  rest  of  this  miserable  cargo.  They  were  assigned  to  the 
correspondents  of  Mr.  Norton,  a  Bristol  merchant  and  sn gar-planter, 
who  was  to  be  at  the  charge  of  transplanting  them  to  the  Indian 
Bridges,  now  called  Barbadoes. 

"But  these  severities  only  exasperated  the  Tories,  who  were 
quickened  to  action  by  the  sight  of  their  ancient  gentry  begging  at 
the  usurpers'  doors.  What  must  they  not  have  felt  to  see  Lord 
Eoche  and  his  daughters  reduced  to  beggar}^,  and  forced  to  walk  on 
foot  to  Connaught,  to  end  their  days  there  in  some  cabin,  while  their 
ancient  inheritance  was  divided  between  the  cornet  of  some  English 
regiment  of  horse  and  his  troop  ?  .  .  . 

*  Dated  cat  Dublin,  19th  April,  1655.  "  Perfect  Proceedings  of  State,"  &c.,  p. 
4676.    Quoted  by  Mr.  Prendergast,  pp.  337,  338. 


The  Tories  not  to  he  Intimidated.  383 

"But  how  must  the  feelings  of  national  hatred  have  been  height- 
ened by  seeing  everywhere  crowds  of  such  unfortunates,  their 
brothers,,  cousins,  kinsmen,  and  by  beholding  the  whole  country 
given  up  a  prey  to  hungry,  insolent  soldiers  and  Adventurers  from 
England,  mocking  their  wrongs  and  triumphing  in  their  own  irresist- 
ible power  ?  .  .  . 

"They  resolved  no  longer  to  wait  for  the  aid  of  the  French  or 
Spaniards.  'Are  we  alone' — they  said  one  to  another — 'of  all  the 
nations  of  the  world,  not  thought  fit  to  live  in  our  own  country  ? 
Are  we  alone,  like  the  profanest  outlaws,  to  be  driven  from  our  native 
soil  ?  Shall  we  linger  here,  to  show  foreign  nations  the  distinguish- 
ing mark  the  English  have  set  upon  us  ? ' "  * 

No  threats,  no  penalties,  no  hardships  endured  by  themselves,  no 
misfortunes  happening  to  their  fellows,  could  intimidate  these  des- 
perate men.  In  vain  did  the  Government  have  recourse  to  the  usual 
weapon  of  bribery  to  get  Tory  to  betray  or  murder  liis  brother  Tories. 
They  were  too  faithful  to  eacli  other,  too  set  in  their  invincible  hatred 
of  the  oppressor,  to  listen  to  the  promise  of  gold,  of  pardon,  of  pro- 
motion, of  wealth  for  the  performance  of  treachery.  They  were 
hunted  down  like  wolves, — hunted  by  single  men,  and  by  organized 
bands,  as  Blennerhassett  hunted  the  Irish  of  Fermanagh  in  1610-11. 
The  inspection  of  the  Public  Accounts  Eecord  in  Dublin  showed  the 
author  of  the  "Cromwellian  Conquest"  the  sums  paid  on  the  heads  of 
murdered  Tories,  and  the  numbers  slain  among  these  indomitable 
haters  of  everything  English. 

And  yet  the  race  of  them  survived, — because  the  Wrong  which 
begat  revolt  and  desperate  resolutions  waxed  stronger  and  was  per- 
petuated: they  continued  to  be  the  terror  of  the  Plunderers  and 
Adventurers  who  possessed  the  broad  lands  of  the  disinherited  and 
outlawed  Celt. 

So,  from  out  the  universal  desolation,  discouragement,  and 
despair,  ever  sounded  for  more  than  a  century  the  midnight  shout  of 

*  "  Cromwellian  Conquest,"  p.  341. 


384  Tlie  Canse  of  Ireland. 

the  avenging  Tory^  and  the  clasli  of  his  steel  was  a  protest  against 
the  boast  that  Ireland  was  subjugated  and  subdued,  that  no  arm  was 
raised  in  her  defence,  and  no  voice  dared  to  speak  of  her  restoration 
to  independence. 


■IJ=»5<isi. 


ISAAC    BUTT.  M.P. 


TnOM  A  PHOTOGRAPH  B'V  O'SHEA    LIMERICK. 


PART   FIFTH. 


THE   LAST   PERIOD   OF   WRONG   (1660—1885). 


I. 

The  Last  Stewarts. 

TTTHAT  was  the  origin  of  that  eight  by  which  the  Irish  land- 
^  "  lords  thus  substituted  to  the  native  proprietors,  have  held 
since  1G50  down  to  the  present  time  ?  Surely  this  is  a  question  that 
deserves  to  be  looked  into  by  all  who  would  understand  the  present 
struggle  in  Ireland  between  the  mass  of  the  people  and  the  landed 
aristocracy.  The  idea  that  an  enormous,  an  unparalleled  injustice 
was  committed  by  the  Parliament  under  Cromwell,  and  perpetuated 
by  subsequent  legislatures  and  Governments,  has  been  slowly  dawning 
on  the  minds  of  English  Statesmen  and  Publicists,  as  well  as  upon 
the  more  enlightened  and  liberal-minded  among  the  English  people. 

It  is,  therefore,  the  time  to  submit  to  them,  and,  indeed,  to  the 
opinion  of  the  whole  civilized  world,  certain  facts  which  will  direct 
every  judicial  mind,  every  unprejudiced  -person,  to  examine  further, 
to  weigh  the  legislative  acts  by  which  the  property  of  a  whole  nation 
was  transferred  from  the  legitimate  owners  to  strangers. 

"It  cannot  be  imagined,"  says  Carte,  "in  how  easy  a  method  and 

with  what  peaceable  formality,  this  whole  great  Kingdom  was  taken 

from  the  just  lords  and  proprietors,  and  divided  and  given  amongst 

those  who  had  no  other  right  to  it  but  that  they  had  power  to  keep 

25  (385) 


386  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

it;  no  men  having  so  great  shares  as  they  who  had  been  insti'nments 
to  murder  the  King,  and  were  not  hke  AvilUiigly  to  part  with  it  to  his 
successor.  Where  any  great  sums  of  money  for  arms,  ammunition, 
or  any  great  merchandise,  had  been  so  long  due  that  they  were  looked 
upon  as  desperate,  the  creditors  subscribed  all  those  sums  due  as  lent 
upon  adventure,  and  had  their  satisfaction  assigned  to  them  as 
Adventurers.  Ireland  was  the  great  capital,  out  of  which  all  debts 
were  paid,  all  services  rewarded,  and  all  acts  of  bounty  performed."* 

This  writer,  hostile  as  he  is,  like  his  model  statesman,  Ormonde, 
to  the  Irish  Catholics,  states  the  case  very  mildly,  as  against  the  Eng- 
lish. We  have  another  witness  in  one  of  the  chief  actors  in  this 
great  Drama  of  Spoliation  and  Massacre,  Lord  Broghill.  Here  is  a 
passage  from  his  Memoirs: 

"After  the  subduing  of  Ireland,  there  was  no  small  consultation, 
how  to  divide  every  one's  portion.  At  last,  at  a  council  of  war  of  all 
the  commanders.  Lord  Broghill  proposed,  that  the  whole  kingdom 
might  be  surveyed,  and  the  numbers  of  acres  taken,  Avith  the  quality 
of  them;  and  then  all  the  soldiers  to  br'ng  in  their  demands  of 
arrears,  and  so  to  give  to  every  man,  by  lot,  as  many  acres  of  ground, 
as  might  answer  the  value  of  their  arrears. 

"This  was  agreed  on;  and  all  Ireland  being  surveyed,  and  the 
value  of  acres  given  in,  the  highest  was  valued  only  at  four  shillings 
the  acre,  and  some  only  at  a  penny.  Accordingly  they  took  the 
names  of  all  that  were  in  arrear,  who  drew  lots  in  what  part  of  the 
kingdom  their  portion  should  bo;  and  in  this  manner  the  whole 
kingdom  was  divided  among  the  conquerors  and  adventurers  of 
money. "  f 

But  some  form  of  legality  must  be  given  to  the  resolution  of  this 
"Council  of  War  "  sitting  on  the  corpse  of  a  nation,  and  concluding  to 
draw  lots  in  dividing  her  inheritance.  The  English  Parliament 
(whose  acts,  be  it  borne  in  mind,  had  never  been  admitted  in  Ireland 
save  only  as  sanctioned  by  the  Parliament  of  Ireland  and   the  King) 

*  "  Life  of  Ormonde,"  vol.  ii.,  Append.  33.  t  "  Orrery's  Memoirs,"  i.  39. 


John  Cooke's  Sessions.  387 

imriTediately  took  steps  to  have  this  determination  of  its  Commanders 
in  Ireland  carried  out  and  clothed  with  such  legal  formalities  as 
would  prevent  future  litigation.  As  a  preliminary,  Cromwell  ap- 
pointed his  son-in-law  Fleetwood  to  be  Lord  Deputy  in  Ireland,  and 
four  of  the  Protector's  most  trusty  followers  were  assigned  to  Fleet- 
wood as  Parliamentary  Commissioners  to  govern  Ireland  with  supreme 
power  (Aug.  165'2).  In  the  same  month  (Aug.  12,  1652),  Parliament 
passed  the  first  Act  of  Settlement.  The  Commissioners,  without 
losing  a  moment,  in  pursuance  of  their  instructions  to  use  the  powers 
this  Act  conferred,  began  by  establishing  a  High  Court  of  Justice  to 
try  all  Irish  Catholics  who  had  murdered  any  Protestant  or  English- 
man out  of  battle  since  Oct.  23,  16-41.  All  found  guilty  were  to  for- 
feit life  and  estate.  Of  course,  there  was  no  inquiry  to  be  held  about 
Irish  Catholics  murdered  by  Englishmen  all  through  these  eleven 
years.  The  Court  first  sat  in  Kilkenny,  where,  unfortunately,  had 
been  preserved  intact  all  the  official  records  of  the  late  Confederacy, 
— the  Lists  of  Association  among  them.  These  were  peremptory  and 
decisive  evidence  against  every  Associate  and  all  others  found  impli- 
cated in  the  transactions  of  the  Supreme  Council  and  its  voluminous 
correspondence.  After  holding  its  first  sessions  in  that  city,  it  sat 
successively  at  Cork,  Waterford,  Dublin,  and  other  places. 

The  sword,  the  halter,  famine,  the  plague,  and  voluntary  exile, 
had  so  thinned  the  ranks  of  the  generation  who  had  taken  up  arms 
under  Phelim  and  Owen  O'Neill, — that  the  few  left  were  like  the 
rare  ears  of  corn  on  the  harvest  field,  which  escape  the  sickle  of  the 
reapers,  and  which  the  gleaners  have  not  yet  gathered.  The  High 
Court,  in  spite  of  the  hearty  earnestness  with  which  its  members 
went  to  work,  could  only  find  in  all  Ireland  some  two  hundred 
persons  to  convict  and  to  hang. 

We  have  already  become  acquainted  Avith  John  Cooke,  one  of 
these  exemplary  Justices,  and  the  very  soul  of  all  these  proceedings. 
He  had  brougjit  Charles  I.  to  the  block.  He  condemned  to  death 
hundreds  of  better  and  truer  men  in  Ireland.  These  sessions  were 
called  by  the  people  'Cromwell's  Slaughter-Houses. '     In  them  "no 


388  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

articles  were  pleadable  .  .  . ;  and  against  a  charge  of  things  said  to 
have  been  done  twelve  years  before,  little  or  no  defence  could  be 
made;  and  the  cry  that  was  made  of  blood,  aggravated  with  expres- 
sions of  so  much  horror,  and  the  no  less  daunting  aspect  of  the 
Court,  quite  confounded  the  amazed  prisoners,  so  that  they  came  like 
sheep  to  the  slaughter."* 

We  have  the  utterance  of  the  same  Mr.  Justice  Cooke  from  the 
bench,  and  quoted  in  the  last  chapter,  declaring  that  the  Government 
held  as  a  rebel  and  a  traitor  every  man  born  in  Ireland  since  October 
23,  1641. 

The  way  was  now  prepared  for  the  "Great  Work,"  the  "Work  of 
God"  in  Ireland,  the  transplantation  to  Connaught  of  all  those 
native-born  rebels  and  traitors. 

The  Act  of  August  12,  1652,  had  pronounced  the  forfeiture  of 
two-thirds  of  their  estates  against  all  who  had  boi'ne  arms  against  the 
Parliament  of  the  Commonwealth;  while  those  who  had  resided  in 
Ireland  from  October  1,  1649,  to  March  1,  1650,  and  had  not  fought 
under  Cromwell,  or  otherwise  manifested  their  "constant  good  affec- 
tion," were  to  forfeit  one-third. 

This  was  how  they  dealt  with  the  Irish  Proprietors.  As  to  those 
who  owned  property  of  any  kind  to  the  value  of  ten  pounds  sterling, 
they  were  offered  a  full  and  free  pardon.  But  we  already  know  what 
such  pardon  was  intended  to  be. 

The  chief  enemy  whom  the  Conquerors  and  the  Adventurers  with 
their  Parliament  had  now  to  dispose  of  were  the  Proprietors. 
What  they  aimed  at  and  coveted  above  all  things  was  the  property 
of  the  latter. 

High  Courts  of  Justice,  Acts  of  Parliament,  the  Gallows,  trans- 
plantation to  Connaught,  banishment  to  the  Continent,  slavery  in  the 
West  Indies  or  the  New  England  Colonies,  were  only  means  toward 
that  darling  and  long-cherished  end. 

The  two-thirds  or  the  one-third  still  left  to  the  Irish  proprietor 

*  "  History  of  ludependency." 


The  Irish  guilty  of  holding  Property.  389 

were  not  to  be  restored  to  him  from  his  former  estates.  The  same 
authority  wliich  confiscated  a  part,  assumed  the  right  to  give  an 
equivalent  for  it  in  Connauglit,  even  though  tliat  equivalent  should 
be  cruelly  and  unlawfully  taken  from  another  despoiled  proprietor. 
This  method  of  compensation  was  devised  and  regulated  by  the  Sec- 
ond Act  of  Parliament,  of  October,  1G53.  The  Proclamation  issued 
at  Kilkenny  on  the  11th  of  the  same  month,  was  only  the  first  step 
toward  its  execution. 

Martial  law  was  at  once  established  throughout  the  Kingdom,  in 
order  to  enable  the  army,  who  were  the  party  most  interested  in  this 
settlement,  to  deal  promptly  and  summarily  with  every  species  of 
opposition. 

The  Curse  of  Cromwell  was  on  Ireland, 

In  the  courts  established  at  Athlone  and  Loughrea,  the  trans- 
planted proprietors  had  to  sign  conveyances  to  the  officers  authorized 
to  deliver  to  them  assignments  in  Connaught,  releasing  the  new  pro- 
prietors of  their  estates  from  all  claims  against  them.  There  was  no 
alternative  between  Connaught  and  refusal,  but  the  death  of  the 
outlaw.  The  ancient  proprietors  being  thus  "driven  out"  or  hanged, 
the  new  landlords  of  Ireland  entered  into  possession. 

Thus  was  Lord  Broghill's  plan  carried  out.  No  wonder  that  they 
have  erected  to  his  father,  Richard  Boyle,  and  to  himself  so  splendid 
a  monument  in  St.  Patrick's  Protestant  Cathedral  in  Dublin.  This 
sacred  edifice  also  was  sacrilegiously  taken  from  its  lawful  proprietors. 
There  is  not  in  Ireland  a  more  fitting  place  for  a  public  memorial  to 
this  father  and  this  son, — two  of  the  most  fortunate  of  the  bold,  bad, 
and  bloody  men  who  fattened  upon  the  spoils  of  our  unfortunate 
country. 

The   Wrong  Sanctio)ied  by  Cltarles  11. 

Charles  II.  was  a  fugitive  from  his  native  kingdom,  when  about 

25,000  exiled  Irish  swordmen  and  nobles  sent  to  the  palace  of  St. 

Germain  near  Paris,  to  offer  him  their  services  in  recovering  his 

crown.     He  gratefully  accepted  what  was  generously  offered.     They 


390  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

followed  this  Stuart  King  to  the  Low  Countries  in  fulfilment  of  their 
promise;  and  remained  there  awaiting  his  orders,  when  unforeseen 
events  favored  his  return  to  England  in  1G60. 

On  November  30,  in  that  same  year,  he  published  his  celebrated 
Declaration  for  the  Settlement  of  Ireland.  Before  we  pronounce  an 
opinion  upon  this  royal  measure,  let  us  see  what  precautions  the  Par- 
liament of  England,  and  the  men  who  ruled  Ireland  in  their  name, 
had  taken  to  secure  the  Plunderers  in  the  possession  of  their  Plunder, 
and  to  cut  off  from  all  Irish  Papists  every  avenue  to  justice,  every 
earthly  hope  of  seeing  undone,  even  in  the  smallest  measure,  the 
mighty  Wrong  under  which  they  were  suffering. 

Lord  Broghill  and  Sir  Charles  Coote  the  Younger  had  been 
chiefly  instrumental  in  putting  down  in  Ireland  all  opposition  to  the 
restoration  of  the  Stuarts.  They  had,  therefore,  the  chief  influence 
in  the  government  councils  there;  and  the  men  who  were  placed  at 
the  head  of  affairs  were  deeply  interested  in  not  permitting  one  little 
stone  to  be  removed  from  the  solid  edifice  of  Iniquity  which  they  had 
cemented  with  the  blood  of  hundreds  of  thousands. 

Of  course,  when  it  was  reported  in  Ireland  that  the  King  was  in 
the  Low  Countries  at  the  head  of  an  Irish  army  of  from  '25,000  to 
30,000  men,  there  was  joy  and  exultation.  So,  they  would  soon  see 
a  great  army  of  their  own  fighting  again  for  Ireland  on  Irish  soil. 
This  joy,  and  the  rumors  and  acts  of  imprudence  it  gave  rise  to,  were 
not  slow  in  traveling  to  England,  where  everything  concerning  Ire- 
land and  the  Irish  were  always  sure  to  be  exaggerated  and  perverted. 

But  when  the  King  had  actually  returned,  the  repressed  feelings 
of  the  despoiled  and  downtrodden  burst  forth  in  more  open  manifes- 
tation. The  King  would  surely  recall  to  Ireland  the  brave  army  so 
devoted  to  his  interests.  And  would  the}^  the  oppressed,  not  get 
back  their  own  again  ? 

But  Lord  Broghill  and  Sir  Charles  Coote  had  taken  such  energetic 
measures  both  in  the  South  and  in  the  North,  that  the  poor  dis- 
armed and  isolated  remnants  of  the  Irish  Catholic  populations  could 
not  stir  hand  or  foot  without  being  instantly  beaten  down. 


strategy  of  the  Antl-Catliollc  Consjjirators.  391 

Meanwliile  they  were  careful  to  prepare  public  opinion  in  England 
among  the  Eoyalists  as  well  as  among  the  alarmed  Eepublicans,  in 
such  a  manner,  that  tlie  Irish  Papists  sliould  be  represented  as 
threatening  a  new  rebellion,  aiid  the  King  be  morally  forced  to  set  his 
face  against  them. 

"I  hope  I  need  say  nothing  of  Ireland,"  were  the  King's  first 
timid  and  uncertain  words  in  his  first  speech  in  Parliament,  July  27, 
1660;  "and  that  they  alone  shall  not  be  without  the  benefit  of  my 
mercy.  They  have  shew'd  much  affection  to  me  abroad,  and  you  will 
have  a  care  of  my  honour." 

Poor  King!  he  seems  to  feel  how  little  he  can  do  for  his  best 
friends,  when  his  enemies  are  still  all  but  all-poAverful.  Let  us  learn 
from  Dr.  Leland  by  what  strategy  these  enemies  as  well  as  his  false 
friends  defeated  the  weakly  good  intentions  of  the  pleasure-loving 
King. 

"In  England,  every  rumor  unfavorable  to  the  Irish  was  received 
with  peculiar  avidit3\  Agents  were  sent  from  Ireland,  who  reported 
their  conduct  and  designs  with  every  offensive  aggravation,  so  that, 
before  the  landing  of  the  King,  the  Act  of  Indemnity  was  so  pre- 
pared as  to  exclude  all  those  who  had  any  hand  in  plotting  or  con- 
triving, aiding  or  abetting  the  rebellion  of  Ireland,  by  which  the 
whole  Romish  party  were  in  effect  excluded.  And  when,  by  another 
clause,  it  was  provided,  that  the  Act  should  not  extend  to  restore  to 
any  persons  the  estates  disposed  of  by  authority  of  any  Parliament  or 
Convention,  it  was  with  some  difficulty  that  an  exception  was  inserted 
of  'the  Marquess  of  Ormonde  and  other  the  Protestants  of  Ireland.' 
Some  other  provisos  were  attempted,  which  must  have  utterly  ruined 
all  the  old  English  families  of  this  country,  but  they  were  suspended, 
and  afterwards  defeated  by  the  Marquess."  * 

We  must  impose  upon  the  reader's  indulgence,  by  asking  him  to 
consider  this  other  account  from  one  even  less  impartial  and  just  to 
the  Catholics  of  Ireland  than  Carte : 

*  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  iv.,  111. 


392  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

"The  Irish"  (it  is  Wright  we  quote),  "as  they  had  done  on  so 
many  occasions  before,  injured  their  cause  by  their  own  violence. 
Always  sanguine  in  temper,  they  never  doubted  for  a  moment  that 
the  King  would  restore  them  to  all  they  had  lost;  and  impatient  of 
delay,  .  .  .  they  waited  no  process  of  law,  but,  even  before  the  King 
had  been  proclaimed,  many  of  them  (?)  repossessed  themselves  of 
their  patrimonial  lands  by  force,  and  drove  out  the  new  settlers.  So 
early  as  the  month  of  May,  16G0,  these  turbulent  proceedings  had  be- 
come so  general,  that  the  convention  was  obliged  to  issue,  on  the  20tli 
of  that  month,  a  proclamation  against  them." 

We  find  nothing  in  authentic  history  to  justify  the  issuing  of  such 
a  proclamation.  It  was  the  interest  of  Broghill,  Coote,  and  their 
fellow  conspirators  to  invent  such  accounts  of  risings  and  violent  pro- 
ceedings on  the  part  of  the  Irish.  They  had  to  prepare  public 
opinion  in  England  as  well  as  the  royal  mind  itself  for  the  uncon- 
ditional acceptance  of  their  scheme  of  indemnity  and  settlement. 
But  Wright  himself  explains  the  matter. 

"These  outrages,"  he  says,  "were  eagerly  seized  upon  by  the  Eng- 
lish, who  represented  them  as,  and  perhaps  thought  them,  the  pre- 
ludes to  a  new  rebellion;  and  the  Irish  Catholics  were  looked  upon 
with  suspicion  and  treated  with  rigor.  Agents,  sent  from  the  Protes- 
tant part}^,  carried  to  England  aggravated  reports  of  their  conduct  and 
designs,  .so  that  before  the  King  landed,  the  Act  of  Indemnity  was  so 
prepared  as  to  exclude  all  who  had  had  any  hand,  not  only  in  plotting 
and  contriving,  but  in  aiding  or  abetting,  the  Irish  rebellion  which 
had  commenced  in  1641,  and  lasted  under  various  forms  during  more 
than  ten  years.  This  amounted,  in  effect,  to  the  exclusion  of  the 
whole  Eomish  party  from  grace;  and  the  feeling  which  dictated  it 
was  so  strong,  that  it  was  with  some  difficulty  those  who  framed  the 
act  would  admit  an  exception  in  favor  of  the  Marquis  of  Ormonde 
and  other  Protestants  of  Ireland.  ...  On  the  other  hand,  the  severe 
ordinances  against  the  Irish  Catholics  made  under  the  rule  of  the 
Protector  and  Parliament,  were  executed  with  rigor.  They  were  not 
allowed  to  pass  from  one  province  to  another;  many  of  them,  on  sus- 


Damning  Facts.  393 

picion  of  disaffection,  were  thrown  into  prison,  their  letters  were 
intercepted;  and  they  were  forbidden  to  hold  meetings  together.  On 
the  King's  arrival  in  London,  he  was  immediately  assailed  with 
apprehensions  of  a  rebellion  in  Ireland;  and,  upon  representations 
from  Parliament,  he  was  induced  to  publish  a  Proclamation  for 
apprehending  and  prosecuting  of  all  Irish  rebels,  and  commanding 
that  Adventurers,  soldiers,  and  others  should  not  be  disturbed  in  the 
possession  of  manors,  houses,  or  lands  forfeited  by  the  Irish,  until 
evicted  by  process  of  law,  or  till  further  order  should  be  taken 
therein.  It  was  evident  that  at  present  the  Protestant  Party  had 
gained  possession  of  the  royal  ear.  .  .  .  The  Convention  and  their 
agents  who  attended  at  the  English  Court,  anxious  to  secure,  against 
all  risks,  the  interests  of  the  Soldiers  and  Adventurers,  pressed  for 
the  immediate  appointment  of  an  Irish  Parliament,  which  they  knew 
must  be  composed  entirely  of  their  own  friends."  * 

That,  as  Leland  says,  "the  whole  Eomish  party  was  in  effect 
excluded  "  from  all  the  benefits  of  this  Act,  will  not  surprise  the 
reader,  after  what  has  been  said. 

"Various  schemes,"  says  Wright,  "were  successively  proposed  for 
satisfying  these  conflicting  appeals,  but  all  were  found  equally  beset 
with  difficulties,  until  at  last  the  King  adopted  one  drawn  up  by  the 
Earl  of  Orrery  (Lord  Broghill),  Sir  John  Clotworthy  and  Sir  Arthur 
]\Iervyn;  these  men  'were  in  heart  advocates  of  the  claims  of  the 
adventurers  and  soldiers;  and,  according  to  their  plan,  the  latter 
were  to  be  confirmed  in  their  possessions,  while  the  '  innocent '  or 
'meritorious'  Irish  were  to  be  reprised  out  of  other  lands  that  had 
been  forfeited,  and  which,  according  to  an  estimate  they  had  made, 
would  be  sufficient  for  the  purpose."  f 

It  is,  therefore,  an  historical  fact,  that  the  men  who  had  con- 
spired to  provoke  the  rebellion  of  1641,  who  had  driven  every  Cath- 
olic in  Ireland,  both  of  Celtic  and  of  English  race,  into  the  ranks  of 
the  insurgents;  who  had  devised  and  planned  the  confiscation  of  the 

*  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  vol.  ii.,  pp.  119,  120.  t  Ibidem,  p.  121. 


394  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

lands  of  the  nation,  were  the  very  men  who  drew  up  this  scheme  of 
final  settlement.  It  was  drawn  up  before  the  King  landed  in  Eng- 
land. In  fact,  it  was  like  leaving  in  the  hands  of  Cortes  and  his 
Captains  the  final  adjudication  of  the  lands  of  the  entire  Mexican 
Empire.  It  was,  as  if  the  King  of  Spain  and  the  Council  of  the 
Indies,  handed  over  to  the  Buccaneer  Pizarro  and  his  fellows  absolute 
power  to  decree  that  the  Incas  and  their  people  were  idolaters,  rebels 
against  his  Catholic  Majesty,  and  that  all  their  country  was  right- 
fully forfeited  to  the  Spanish  Crown,  and  justly  divided  among 
the  conquerors. 

It  is,  also,  an  unquestionable  historical  fact  that  the  Irish  Par- 
liament assembled  within  a  twelvemonth  to  give  a  legal  sanction  to 
this  Act  of  Settlement  and  Indemnity,  was  made  up  almost  ex- 
clusively of  the  men  who  had  shared  in  the  plunder.  We  have  just 
seen  that  it  was  a  part  of  the  new  Conspiracy. 

This  is  a  most  important  consideration;  and  we  call  the  reader's 
attention  to  it.  ' 

"At  length,  on  the  8th  of  May,  16G1,  the  Irish  Parliament  met, 
after  an  interval  of  nearly  twenty  years.  As  the  Soldiers  and  Ad- 
venturers still  retained  j)ossession  of  all  their  lands,  as  well  as  of  their 
influence  in  the  corporate  towns,  nearly  the  whole  House  of  Com- 
mons was  devoted  to  their  interests,  and  their  anxiety  to  preserve 
what  they  held  had  converted  by  far  the  greater  portion  of  their 
party  into  sticklers  for  the  royal  authority  and  for  the  Episcopal  Gov- 
ernment in  the  Cliurch.  Only  one  Catholic  had  been  elected."  And, 
as  Lord  Orrery  informs  the  Duke  of  Ormonde,  "there  sate  this  day  in 
the  House  of  Lords  but  one  Papist  Peer." 

"Both  Houses" — Wright  continues — "began  with  a  declaration 
requiring  all  persons  to  conform  to  the  church  government  and  lit- 
urgy, established  bylaw.  .  .  .  The  hostility  of  the  Parliament  to  the 
Catholics  was  shown  on  every  occasion,  as  well  as  its  favor  to  the 
Adventurers  and  Soldiers — the  new  possessors  of  estates  whose  titles 
were  to  be  confirmed  by  law.  The  Commons,  in  order  to  prevent  the 
reversal  of  outlawries  and  the  ejectment  of  Adventurers  or  Soldiers 


The  Bill  of  Settlement.  395 

before  they  were  secured  by  a  statute,  petitioned  the  Lords  Justices 
that  the  term  should  be  adjourned  and  the  Courts  of  Law  for  a  cer- 
tain period  sliut  up.  ...  A  Bill  had  been  transmitted  from  Ireland 
to  England  for  imposing  an  oath  of  qualification  on  the  House  of 
Commons,  by  which  it  was  intended  to  exclude  all  Roman  Catholics; 
but  it  had  been  disapproved  as  unseasonable.  The  House  now 
attempted  to  effect  the  purpose  of  this  intended  Act  by  a  resolution, 
by  which  they  excluded  from  their  seats  all  who  had  not  taken  the 
oaths  of  supremacy  and  allegiance;  but  the  Lords  Justices  declared 
this  to  be  an  invasion  of  the  Prerogative.  .  .  .  The  Protestant  Party 
became  angry,  and  accused  the  Government  of  an  unjust  and  danger- 
ous partiality  for  Papists;  and  they  indulged  their  animosity  against 
the  latter  by  raising  and  spreading  abroad  rumors  of  new  plots  and 
conspiracies  to  overthrow  the  Government,  to  renew  the  old  war  of 
massacre  and  extermination,  and  by  such  means  to  re-establish  the 
supremacy  of  the  Church  of  Rome. 

"The  most  important  measure  brought  forward  in  this  Parliament 
was,  of  course,  the  Bill  of  Settlement,  which  was  to  embody  in  a  law 
the  King's  Declaration  with  such  alterations  as  might  be  considered 
requisite.  ...  It  has  been  observed  that  the  'new  interest '  was  pre- 
dominant in  the  House  of  Commons;  and  there  it  was  the  almost 
unanimous  wish  that  tlie  Law  should  be  a  mere  repetition  and  con- 
firmation of  the  King's  Declaration." 

Over  this  Bill  there  was  a  long  and  obstinate  contest  in  both 
Houses  of  the  Irish  Parliament.  But  the  Commons  had  it  pretty 
much  their  own  vv^ay;  and  then  the  Bill  was  sent  to  England  for  the 
King's  approval.  To  England,  therefore,  went  deputations  from  all 
the  great  parties  interested  in  having  it  either  modified  or  preserved 
in  the  form  given  to  it  in  Dublin.  The  Adventurers  and  Soldiers,  or 
the  New  Interest,  as  they  were  now  called,  were  "strong  at  court 
by  the  sympathies  of  their  Protestant  brethren  there  and  through- 
out the  Kingdom,  and  they  fortified  themselves  by  raising  a  con- 
siderable sum  of  money  to  be  distributed  among  those  who  could 
support  their  interests.  .  .  .     The  King  was  disgusted  with  the  diffi- 


396  Tlie  Cause  of  Ireland. 

culties  thrown  in  the  way  of  a  speedy  settlement,  and  his  indolent 
disposition  revolted  at  the  prospect  of  an  endless  series  of  fruitless 
discussions.  He  declared  his  intention  of  establishing  and  supporting 
an  English  interest  in  Ireland.  .  .  .  The  King  became  disgusted  with 
demands  which  shocked  his  own  notions  of  the  Prerogative,  and  in- 
terfered with  his  quiet,  and  he  lent  a  ready  ear  to  the  adversaries 
of  the  Catholics.  These  adversaries  lost  no  opportunity  of  throwing 
odium  upon  the  Catholic  party.  The  country  was  deluged  agahi 
with  narratives  of  the  Irish  massacres  and  rumors  of  conspiracies 
to  renew  them,  Charles,  who  had  issued  his  Declaration  in  the 
belief  that  there  were  lands  enough  to  satisfy  all  parties,  was  now 
sensible  of  his  mistake,  and  was  tormented  with  the  difficulties  that 
beset  the  Irish  question.  Anxious  to  be  relieved  from  it  as  quickly 
as  possible,  and  aware  that  some  party  must  suffer,  he  resolved  to 
sacrifice  the  Irish."* 

The  Bill  was  approved  by  the  King  and  sent  back  to  Ireland, 
where  it  was  oiice  more  passed  through  both  Houses.  Not  till  the 
Duke  of  Ormonde  came  to  Dublin,  in  July,  1G62,  as  Lord  Lieuten- 
ant, was  the  Eoyal  Assent  given  to  this  iniquitous  law,  which  would 
alone  suffice  to  stamp  with  infamy  the  name  of  Charles  II.  It  was 
received,  Wright  tells  us,  with  no  little  exultation  by  the  Protestant 
Party.  But  one  can  only  obtain  some  notion  of  the  unjust  and  mis- 
leading partiality  of  such  an  historian  as  he  is,  only  by  looking  into 
the  Bill  itself,  and  by  seeing  with  one's  ov/n  eyes,  the  clauses  by 
which  it  rendered  it  impossible  to  any  Irish  Catholic  to  obtain  rep- 
aration or  compensation  from  the  wrongs  inflicted  on  his  creed  and 
nation. 

The  burthen  was  thrown  on  the  Catholics  to  prove  their  own 
"innocency,"  as  a  preamble  toward  claiming  the  restoration  of  their 
estates. 

"No  man,"  says  Carte,  "was  to  be  restored  as  an  innocent  Papist, 
who  at  or  before  the  cessation  on  September  15,  1643,   was  of  the 


Hist,  of  Ireland,"  vol.  ii.,  pp.  126,  127. 


JVo  liope  of  Justice  for  the  Papists.  397 

rebels'  party,  or  enjoyed  his  estate,  real  or  personal,  in  the  rebels' 
quarters  (except  the  inhabitants  of  Cork  and  Youghal  that  were 
driven  into  these  quarters  by  force),  or  who  had  entered  into  the 
Eoman  Catholic  Confederacy  before  the  peace  of  164G.  "Whoever 
at  any  time  adhered  to  the  Xiincio  or  Clergy's  Party,  or  Papal  Power, 
in  opposition  to  the  King's  authority,  or,  having  been  excommuni- 
cated for  adhering  to  his  Majesty's  authority,  had  afterwards  owned 
his  offence  in  so  doing,  and  been  thereupon  relaxed  from  excommuni- 
cation; whoever  derived  the  title  to  his  estate  from  any  that  died 
guilty  of  the  aforesaid  crimes,  or  pleaded  the  articles  of  the  peace  for 
his  estate,  or,  living  in  the  English  quarters,  held  a  correspondence 
with  the  rebels,  &c.,  &c.  Whoever  came  under  any  of  these  de- 
nominations was  not  to  be  deemed  an  '  innocent '  Papist.  One  of 
these  qualifications  was  certainly  very  rigorous,  and  the  rigor  of 
the  law  in  many  cases  can  hardly  be  distinguished  from  injustice. 
Abundance  of  Koman  Catholics  w^ell  affected  to  the  King,  and  very 
averse  to  the  rebellion  of  their  countrymen,  lived  quietly  in  their  own 
houses,  within  the  quarters  of  the  rebels,  who  out  of  reverence  to 
their  virtues,  or  favor  to  their  religion,  allowed  them  to  do  so,  though 
they  never  took  arms  or  engaged  in  any  hostile  act  in  opposition  to 
his  Majesty.  Such  of  them  as  had  offered  to  take  shelter  in  Dublin, 
were  by  the  Lords  Justices  banished  thence  on  pain  of  death  by  pub- 
lic proclamation,  and  ordered  to  retire  thence  to  their  own  houses  in 
the  country,  wdaere  they  could  not  help  falling  iiito  the  power  of  the 
rebels;  and,  if  these  suffered  them  to  live  in  quiet,  an  equitable  man, 
who  considers  the  circumstances  of  these  times,  and  the  condition  of 
all  countries  that  are  in  a  state  of  war,  will  hardly  see  any  such 
iniquity  in  the  receiving  of  that  mercy,  or  in  the  unavoidable  neces- 
sity they  were  under  of  living  in  their  own  houses,  as  should  bring 
these  persons  a  forfeiture  of  their  estates."  * 

Elsewhere  Carte  adds  a  remark  which  is  very  pertinent  to  our 
present  purpose:   "The  qualifications  of  innocency" — he  says — "re- 

*  "  Life  of  Ormonde,"  ii.,  p.  220. 


398  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

quired  by  these  instructions  (particularly  that  whereby  living  in  the 
Irish  quarters  was  to  be  deemed  a  proof  of  guilt),  had  been  com- 
plained of  as  too  severe;  but,  as  notwithstanding  that  severity,  several 
of  the  Irish  had  proved  their  innocency,  their  adversaries,  whose 
interest  it  was  to  involve  them  all  without  exception  in  the  common 
guilt,  were  desirous  to  add  to  the  rigor  of  these  qualifications,  and  to 
make  the  proof  of  nocency  so  easy  and  general,  that  none  of  that 
nation  might  be  able  to  escape  censure,  or  save  his  estate."* 

Blind  indeed  must  be  the  man  Avho  reads  the  history  of  Ireland 
from  the  year  1634-1CG2,  who  does  not  see  that  all  the  resources  of 
intellectual  skill  and  malicious  intent  in  her  governors  were  bent  in 
bringing  about  such  a  rebellion  as  might  involve  every  man  born  on 
the  soil  of  Ireland, — every  Irish  Catholic,  especially.  The  fell  pur- 
pose of  AVentworth  was  taken  up,  developed,  and  carried  out  with 
infernal  ability  by  Richard  Bo3de  and  Adam  Loftns,  by  William  Par- 
sons and  John  Borlase.  Cromwell,  Iretou,  and  Fleetwood,  were  only 
the  iron  hand  at  the  service  of  this  Purpose  incarnate  in  the  successive 
Lords  Justices, — till  Broghill  and  Coote  and  Sir  Maurice  Eustace 
stand  before  us  as  such  in  the  year  of  Grace  1C60. 

A  Court  of  Claims  was  established  for  the  benefit  of  all  who 
wished  to  prove  their  innocency,  immediately  after  the  Bill  had 
received  the  Eoyal  Assent  in  July,  1C62.  But  this  Court  was  only  to 
hold  its  session  for  six  months,  while  the  number  of  Claimants,  in  a 
Memorial  presented  to  the  Government  and  praying  for  an  extension 
of  time,  is  stated  to  be  8,000  !  Sir  Heneage  Finch,  the  Attorney 
General,  admits  that  there  were  5,000  claimants;  and  Leland  sa3'S 
there  were  more  than  3,000.  "We  may  safely  say  there  were  some 
0,000  persons  most  anxious  to  be  heard  by  the  judges.  And  yet  the 
Government  and  the  Judges  so  managed  that  the  Court  only  began 
its  sessions  in  August. 

"It  was  declared  in  the  New  Bill  that  the  Protestants  were,  in  the 
first  place  and  especially,  to  be  settled,  and  that  any  ambiguity  was  to 

*  "  Life  of  Ormonde,"  ii.,  p.  263. 


The  High  Court  of  Claims  a  Farce.  399 

be  interpreted  in  the  sense  most  favorable  to  their  interests.  It  was 
also  provided,  that  no  Papist,  who  by  the  qualification  of  the  former 
Act,  had  not  been  adjudged  innocent,  should  at  any  future  time  be 
reputed  innocent,  or  entitled  to  claim  any  lands  or  settlements. 
Thus  every  remaining  hope  of  those  numerous  claimants  whose  causes 
had  not  been  heard,  was  entirely  cut  off.  They  complained  of  per- 
jury and  subornation  in  the  causes  that  had  been  tried  before  the 
Commissioners  of  Claims;  though  such  wicked  practices  were  proba- 
bly not  confined  to  one  party.  But  their  great  and  striking  grievance 
was,  that  more  than  three  thousand  persons  were  condemned,  with- 
out the  justice  granted  to  the  vilest  criminals,  that  of  a  fair  and  equal 
trial.  Of  this  number,  though  many,  and  probably  the  greater  part, 
would  have  been  declared  nocent,  yet  several  cases  were  undoubtedly 
pitiable;  and  now,  twenty  only  were  to  be  restored  by  especial 
favor."* 

Poor  King !  The  wretched  slave  of  vice,  instead  of  being  the 
devoted  and  self-sacrificing  servant  of  all  his  peoples,  and  of  making 
himself  an  immortal  name  by  binding  up  the  wounds  of  the  Mon- 
archy,— allowed  the  party  who  had  brought  his  father  to  the  block  to 
consummate  in  Ireland,  and  toward  that  father's  most  faithful  sub- 
jects, the  most  gigantic  iniquity  of  all  time. 

Of  course  that  Court  of  Claims  was  only  a  sham. 

The  Government  Avere  not  ashamed  to  be  consistent  in  their 
infamy.  Out  of  4,000  Catholic  claimants,  only  COO  were  heard. 
The  other  3,400  were  never  allowed  another  opportunity  for  hearing 
or  redress. 

Furthermore, — while  the  poor  Irish  Catholics  were  endeavoring 
to  open  the  eyes  of  the  King  in  London  to  this  enormous  aggravation 
of  iniquity  inflicted  on  them,  the  Lords  Justices  issued  a  proclamation 
ordering  all  those  who  had  been  transplanted  into  Connaught,  "to 
return  back  again  to  the  same  places  to  which  they  had  been  re- 
spectively transplanted,  and  not  to  depart  from  thence  without  special 

*  Leland,  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  iv,  14:6. 


400  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

licence,"  under  pain  of  being  forthwitli  imprisoned  and  placed  at  tlie 
discretion  of  the  Lords  Justices.  Barbadoes  and  Jamaica  still  needed 
wliite  slaves.  And  such  slavery  was  just  retribution  for  Irish  Papists 
who  dared  to  leave  their  confinement  in  Clare  and  Connauglit,  and 
travel  to  Dublin  to  assert  their  claims  to  property,  liberty,  and  the 
right  to  live. 

The  Duke  of  Ormonde,  whose  favor  at  Court  the  Irish  Catholics, 
unfortunately  for  themselves,  did  not  or  would  not  care  to  secure, 
while  their  fate  was  discussed  in  London,  proposed  to  the  King  to 
have  a  Board  appointed  to  hear  their  grievances,  composed  of  the 
Lord  Lieutenant  and  six  members  of  the  Privy  Council,  assisted  by 
other  loyal  Irish  gentlemen. 

The  English  Council  would  not  hear  of  it. 

To  have  a  correct  idea  of  the  magnitude  of  the  injustice  per- 
petrated by  these  proceedings,  it  ought  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  by 
the  Act  of  Explanation  issued  three  years  after  the  Act  of  Settlement, 
"explaining  some  doubts  arising  upon"  the  latter,  it  was  expressly 
provided  that  no  Papist  who  had  not  been  adjudged  innocent  under 
the  former  act,  should  at  any  future  time  be  reputed  innocent  or 
entitled  to  claim  any  lands  or  settlements. 

Tlie  Magna  Cliarta  of  tlie  Protestants  of  Ireland. 

Thus,  the  Act  of  Settlement  which  passed  both  Houses  of  the 
Irish  Parliament  in  1662,  and  the  Act  of  Explanation  passed  to  sup- 
plement it,  in  1665  (and  called  'the  Black  Act'  by  the  Irish),  are 
considered  to  be  the  "Magna  Charta  of  the  Protestants  of  Ire- 
land." 

This  novel  Charter  of  Eights  beggared  all  that  were  left  of  the 
ancient  Irish  Proprietors,  and  reduced  to  the  most  abject  slavery  the 
remnants  of  the  laboring  Irish  population. 

"A  measure  of  such  sweeping  and  appalling  oppression,"  says  Dr. 
Lingard,  "is  perhaps  without  a  parallel  in  the  history  of  civilized 
nations.  Its  injustice  could  not  be  denied.  And  the  only  apology 
offered  in  its  behalf,  was  the  stern  necessity  of  quieting  the  fears  and 


Tlie  Land  Plunder.  401 

jealousies  of  the  Cromwellian  settlers^  and  of  establishing  on  a  per- 
manent basis  the  Protestant  ascendancy  in  Ireland." 

How   the   Plunder   was   Divided. 
Before  turning  to  another  part  of  our  subject;,  it  may  be  instruc- 
tive to  glance  at  a  few  figures  which  will  speak  more  than  many 
pages  of  argument  to  the  eye  of  the  intelligent  reader.     We  take 
them  from  Count  Murphy's  book  on  Ireland : 

Granted  to  the  English. 

Statute  Acres 

Adventurers 787,326 

Soldiers 2,385,915 

"  Forty-nine "  Officers 450,380 

The  Duke  of  York 169,431 

Duke  of  Ormonde  and  Colonel  Butler  .     .  257,516 

Bishops'  Augmentation 31,596 

4,560,037 

Granted  or  Disposed  of  to  the  Irish. 

Decrees  of  Innocence 1,176,520 

Provisors 491,001 

King's  Letters  of  Restitution    ....  46,398 

ISTominees  in  possession 68,360 

Transplantation 541,530 

2,323,809 
Unappropriated "    .     .     .         824,392 

Total  forfeited  under  Commonwealth  .     .      7,708,238 

"The  'forty-nine'  officers  were  those  who  claimed  arrears  for 
service  under  the  King  before  1649.  The  Duke  of  York  received  a 
grant  of  all  the  lands  held  by  the  regicides  who  had  been  attainted. 
Provisors  were  persons  in  whose  favor  provisos  had  been  made  in  the 
Acts.  Nominees  were  the  Catholics  named  by  the  King  to  be 
restored  to  their  mansion-houses,  and  2,000  acres  contiguous.  Those 
restored  by  the  King's  letters  were  called  Letterees.  '  Transplanta- 
26 


403  Tlte  Cause,  of  Ireland. 

tiou '  refers  to  the  Catholics  whom  Cromwell  forced  from  their  own 
hinds  to  settle  in  Connaught. 

"  At  this  time,  the  profitable  lands  of  Ireland  were  estimated  at 
about  12,500,000  statute  acres  (being  two-thirds  of  the  whole,  which 
were  estimated  at  19,000,000).  About  7,000,000  more  remained. 
These  were  deemed  unprofitable;  but,  even  so,  large  tracts  of  these 
lands  were  taken  by  the  Soldiers  and  Adventnrers,  in  addition  to  the 
lots  of  profitable  land  they  severally  received  in  the  distribution.  The 
whole  property  of  the  country  nov/  stood  as  follows  :— 

Statute  Acres 
"Granted  to  English  Protestants,  of  profitable  lands, 

forfeited  under  the  Commonwealth 4,560,037 

Previously  possessed  by  English  Colonists  of  the 

Protestant  Eaith  and  the  Church,  profitable  land     3, 900, 000  * 
Granted  or  disposed  of  to  the  Irish,  profitable  land  .     2,323,809 
Previously  possessed  by  "Good  Affection"  men, 

Irish 600,000 

Eemaining    still    unappropriated,    being   part   of 

towns,  or  possessed  by  English  or  Irish  without 

titles,  or  doubtful,  of  profitable  land    .     .     ,     .        824,391 

12,208,237  "t 

It  will  hardly  be  believed,  that  while  both  the  Irish  Parliament 
and  the  Court  of  Claims  were  discussing  the  titles  of  so  many  thou- 
sands of  persons, — the  very  highest  in  the  land,  that  "the  whole 
House  of  Commons  with  the  Speaker  at  their  head,  were  profligate 
enough  to  wait  on  the  Lord  Lieutenant,  the  Duke  of  Ormonde,  pray- 
ing that  all  the  examinations  and  depositions  talcen  at  any  time  re- 

*  Account  published  by  the  Cromwellian  proprietors. 

+  Count  Murphy  here  adds  this  interesting:  note:  "  I  have  very  carefully  drawn 
up  this  statement,  chiefly  from  the  Grace  manuscript,  quoted  by  Dr.  Ling:ard,  and 
the  Report  of  the  Commissioners  to  the  English  House  of  Commons,  on  Dec.  15, 
1699.  I  find  it,  to  a  great  extent,  confirmed  by  the  estimate  of  Sir  William  Petty 
('  Political  Anatomy  of  Ireland,'  p.  302 1.  He  says:  '  Of  the  whole  7,500,000  planta- 
tion acres  of  good  land,  the  English  and  Protestants  and  Church  have  this  Christ- 
raas  (1672^  5,U0,000,'  equal  to  8, .352, 500  statute  acres,  'and  the  Irish  have  near 
half  as  much.'"  —  J.  N.  Murphy,  "Ireland  Industrial,  Political,  and  Social," 
pp.  314,  315. 


Instances  of  Perjury  in  the  Court  of  Claims.  403 

speciing  the  rebellion,  all  the  records  of  the  courts,  and  all  hooJcs,  rolls, 
and  writings  remaining  in  any  office,  should  be  received  as  proofs  of 
the  '  nocencj '  (guilt)  of  the  parties  implicated,  and  be  a  bar  to  their 
claims.  This  would  include  all  the  fabulous  tales,  of  which  I  have 
given  so  many  specimens. 

"With  what  abhorrence  must  every  honest  mind  regard  that 
piratical  body,  who  were  so  lost  to  all  sense  of  decency  and  common 
honesty  as  to  pray  that  those  examinations  and  depositions  on  which 
above  1,000  indictments  were  found  in  two  days; — that  of  Dean  Max- 
well, who  swore  to  the  ghosts  screaming  for  revenge,  and  to  the 
murder  of  thousands  on  hearsay; — that  of  Captain  Stratford,  who 
swore  to  the  murder  of  hundreds,  not  one  of  which  he  pretended  to 
have  seen; — and  so  many  others  equally  destitute  of  credibility;  that 
these,  I  say,  should  be  received  as  evidence  to  bar  honest  men  of 
their  estates  ? 

"  I  have  made  very  few,  scarcely  any  quotations  from  Roman  Cath- 
olic writers — and  none  but  Avhat  were  corroborated  by  Protestant 
authority.  I  now  present  one  from  a  work  of  great  merit,  '  Ireland's 
Case  briefly  Stated,^  which  is  a  fair  sample  of  the  atrocious  injustice 
perpetrated  on  the  Irish; — but,  however  vile,  it  cannot  surprise  us 
after  the  various  details  of  the  iniquitous  S3"stem  pursued  on  this  oc- 
casion,— and  the  rules  laid  down  for  establishing  the  nocency  of  tlie 
claimants. 

" '  Mr.  Francis  Betagh  of  Moynalty,  whose  ancestors  for  seven  or 
eight  hundred  years  together,  were  in  possession  of  a  considerable  es- 
tate in  the  county  Meath,  was  but  nine  years  of  age  in  October,  1641. 
Yet  he  was  sworn  in  the  Court  of  Claims  to  have  been  then  in  actual 
rebellion,  at  the  head  of  a  foot  company,  plundering  and  stripping 
the  Protestants;  and  that  by  two  of  the  meanest  scoundrels  of  the 
whole  kingdom  hired  for  the  purpose,  whereof  one  was  then  and 
and  tliere  proved  not  to  have  been  three  years  old  at  the  time  of  that 
insurrection,  and  the  other  no  way  qualified  to  be  believed,  when  the 
gentry  of  the  whole  county  declared  and  testified  the  contrary. 
Nevertheless,  upon  the  bare  oaths  of  these  fellows,  the  gentleman  was 


404  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

adjudged  *  nocent '  by  the  court;  and  althougli  the  perjui7  was  after- 
wards more  fully  detected,  insomuch  that  Sir  Eichard  Ruinsford, 
Chief  Commissioner  or  Judge  of  that  Court,  when  the  Marchioness  of 
Antrim  expostulated  the  matter  with  him,  plainly  acknowledged  of  it 
to  herself,  to  the  now  Earl  of  Limerick,  and  to  other  persons  of 
quality;  yet  no  redress  could  be  had  for  the  gentleman,  nor  any  rem- 
edy to  be  expected,  while  the  enchantment  of  the  Act  of  Settlement 
was  in  force.' " 

We  have  seen  Usher  and  the  most  influential  of  his  associates 
favoring,  under  Stratford's  administration,  the  introduction  of  Pres- 
byterian doctrines  and  forms,  and  thus  preparing  the  way  for  the 
spread  of  the  Covenanters'  tenets  and  practice  both  in  Church  and  in 
State. 

So  powerful  were  the  followers  of  the  Covenant  in  the  three  King- 
doms, that  Charles  II.,  in  the  Convention  of  Breda,  swore  to  observe 
the  Covenant,  as  an  indispensable  condition  toward  returning  to  Eng- 
land and  regaining  his  crown.  In  Ireland  the  men  who  were  most 
influential  and  energetic  in  having  the  King  accepted  and  proclaimed, 
were  men  who  had  been  brought  up  and  had  always  lived  as  Puritans, 
Broghill,  and  Coote,  and  Sir  John  Clotworthy.  And  yet  Puritanism, 
when  the  first  Irish  Parliament  assembled,  and  the  first  breezes  of 
royal  favor  began  to  blow  over  the  land,  seemed  to  recede  and  retire 
to  the  wilderness,  like  mists  near  the  foot-hills  of  the  Apennines,  roll- 
ing up  from  the  plains  with  the  first  beams  of  morning,  and  rushing 
up  through  every  gorge  and  ravine  toward  the  distant  mountains. 

The  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  stood  forth  suddenly  in  all  her 
glory  and  prepotency,  as  if  no  Covenant  oath  had  ever  pledged  the 
faithful  to  extirpate  Prelacy,  Popery,  and  Idolatry. 

"The  Irish  Laud,"  as  Cromwell  had  called  Bramhall,  came  back 
to  Ireland  with  Ormonde,  as  Archbishop  of  Armagh.  Twelve 
vacant  bishopricks  were  filled,  and  the  twelve  new  prelates, — as  if 
they  were  the  successors  of  the  Twelve  Apostles  about  to  begin  anew 
the  conversion  of  Ireland, — were  solemnly  consecrated  in  St.  Pal  ■ 
rick's  Cathedral,  where,  a  few  years  before,  Cromwell  had  stabled 


Whai  was  left  to  the  Church  of  St.  Patrick.  405 

the  horses  of  his  conquer uig  troopers.  It  was  a  striking  and 
memorable  pageant^  that  rehabilitation  of  the  Church  by  Law  Es- 
tablished. 

King  Charles,  not  satisfied  with  restoring  to  it  the  300,000  acres 
of  broad  rich  lands  granted  by  the  English  Henry  and  Elizabeth, 
added  some  31,000  more.  It  was  a  large  endowment,  and  a  goodly 
staff  of  shepherds  for  so  small  a  flock  as  that  Church  could  then 
muster  in  Ireland.  The  entire  population,  after  the  awful  massacres, 
the  plague,  the  famine,  and  the  expulsions,  of  poor  exhausted  Ire- 
land, was  then  1,100,000.  Of  these  800,000  were,  confessedly.  Cath- 
olics; 100,000  were  Presbyterians;  100,000  more  were  claimed  by 
Independents,  Anabaptists,  and  Quakers;  the  remaining  100,000 
constituted  the  charge  of  Archbishop  Bramhall  and  his  fellow-labor- 
ers. Theirs  were  the  Churches,  the  Glebe  Houses,  most  of  the 
Monasteries,  and  all  the  lands  with  which  our  Celtic  forefathers, 
in  the  days  of  tribal  government,  had  endowed  the  clergy  and  the 
religious  institutions  belonging  to  each  tribe  or  Sept.  Kings,  great 
Irish  chiefs,  and  the  Anglo-Norman  nobles,  at  a  later  period,  had 
added  to  these  gifts,  and  adorned  the  land  with  many  a  noble  monas- 
tic and  ecclesiastical  structure.  All  that  now  belonged  to  the  "  Irish 
Laud  "  and  his  compeers. 

And  what  had  the  church  of  the  800,000, — the  original  and 
rightful  owner  of  all  this  property  ? 

Not  one  acre  or  foot  of  land  in  all  Ireland  from  the  centre  to  the 
circumference;  not  one  fragment  of  ruined  wall  of  church  or  mon- 
astery or  monastic  school  belonged  to  her  banned  bishops,  priests, 
and  monks.  Not  even  the  space  of  earth  in  her  ancient  and  teeming 
cemeteries,  sufficient  to  receive  in  death  the  body  of  any  one  of  her 
hunted  pastors  or  of  their  persecuted  flock,  could  be  called  their  own 
by  priests  or  by  people.  The  priest  had  not  even  the  liberty  to  pro- 
nounce the  last  blessing  over  the  dying  or  to  sprinkle  with  holy  water 
the  grave  of  the  dead. 

The  Church  of  the  800,000  had  not  even  the  right  to  live  in 
Ireland. 


406  The  Cause  of  Ireland.   ■ 

And  did  the  restored  Church  by  Law  Established  use  her  recov- 
ered wealth  and  authority  with  a  generous  forbearance  ? 

Why  should  I  stop  to  answer,  when  I  must  hasten  to  conclude 
this  mighty  argument? 

Of  the  political  blunders  committed  by  the  few  Catholics  whom, 
iu  after  years,  Charles  II.  and  his  brother,  James  11. ,  entrusted  with 
oflS.ce  in  any  department  of  the  administration,  in  the  army  and  navy, 
we  need  say  nothing.  These  few  favored  ones  were  taken  from 
among  the  English  families  who  had  most  suffered  for  the  Stuarts. 
Tlie  Celtic  Irish  were  not  responsible  for  their  misdeeds  or  mistakes. 
The  men  who  liad  been  dejiuted,  in  the  first  days  of  the  Eestoration, 
to  plead  the  cause  of  the  Irish  proprietors  in  Westminster  and  AVhite- 
liall,  were  men  of  English  stock,  men,  too,  who  had  made  themselves 
hateful  to  the  Irish  Insurgents  in  the  day  of  their  bitterest  struggle, 
— Sir  Nicholas  Plunket,  the  brother  of  the  Friar  of  that  name,  men- 
tioned in  a  preceding  chapter,  and  Richard  Talbot.  These  men 
cared  but  little  to  have  their  names  or  their  interests  in  any  way 
identified  with  those  of  the  Celtic  800,000.  Peter  Talbot,  brother 
of  Richard,  was  appointed  Catholic  Archbishop  of  Dublin ;  and 
showed  a  zeal  and  a  precipitancy  that  did  the  cause  of  religion 
more  harm  than  good.  His  brother  was  as  intemperate  and  un- 
timely in  urging  the  reconsideration  of  the  Acts  of  Settlement  and 
Explanation  when  the  only  result  could  be  an  increase  of  violence 
toward  the  mass  of  Irish  Catholics.  The  abrogation  of  these  acts,  in 
Richard  Talbot's  mind,  would  only  benefit  the  Anglo-Irish  lords  and 
gentry;  just  as  the  untimely  display  made  by  Archbishop  Talbot 
under  the  Lord-Lieutenancy  of  Berkeley,  only  teiuled  to  restore  the 
mere  splendors  of  Catholic  worship  in  Dubli)!,  while  in  the  provinces 
the  Bishops  and  Priests  were  content  to  be  free  to  minister  to  the 
faithful  in  obscurity  and  peace.  As  before  the  Reformation,  so  after 
it,  the  advocacy  of  the  religious  and  temporal  interests  of  the  Celtic 
masses  were  seldom  successful  or  safe,  if  entrusted  to  the  hands  of 
persons  not  of  their  own  race. 

All  the  ill-concerted  attempts  to  obtain  from  England  any  meas- 


The  Anglo-Irish  Catholics  under  James  11.  407 

ure  of  redress  or  relief  only  culminated  in  some  new  and  violent 
storm  of  English  public  opinion,  in  calling  forth  a  host  of  knaves  and 
fanatics  who  spread  abroad  rumors  of  plots  and  conspiracies.  These 
produced  the  passage  of  the  Test-Oath  Bill,  and  Titus  Gates. 

Then  as  now,  the  men  and  parties  who  lived  on  the  spoils  of  the 
persecuted  Catholics,  or  preserved  their  places  and  influence  by  pro- 
moting the  hatred  of  class  against  class  and  race  against  race, — hesi- 
tated at  the  committing  of  no  crime  to  excite  popular  frenzy,  to  ren- 
der the  employment  of  coercion  necessary,  or  kindle  into  life  the 
smouldering  embers  of  religious  persecution. 

The  Titus  Gates  plot  brought  back  to  Ireland  a  man  whose 
treacherous  policy  had  done  more  mischief  to  the  cause  of  Irish 
nationality  than  the  sword  of  Cromwell, — the  Duke  of  Grmonde,  who 
had  been  the  bane  of  the  Confederation  of  Kilkenny. 

Gn  his  arrival  in  Ireland  edicts  were  published  which  were  worthy 
of  the  rule  of  the  Eoundheads.  The  Catholics  were  disarmed.  All 
ministers  of  the  Catholic  Church  were  given  two  months  to  leave  the 
Kingdom,  after  which  a  price  should  be  set  on  their  heads.  Again 
the  Catholic  institutions  Avhich  had  begun  to  rise  above  the  ground, 
were  seized  or  destroyed  by  the  government.  Catholics  were  ordered 
to  quit  all  garrisoned  and  market-towns;  and  markets  were  to  be  held 
outside  the  walls,  so  that  Papists  might  have  no  chance  or  pretext  for 
entering  them. 

Of  the  existence  of  the  Plot  revealed  and  contrived  by  Gates  the 
Duke  of  Grmonde  is  well  known  to  have  disbelieved  the  existence. 
But  his  fear  of  public  opinion  induced  him  to  go  with  the  populace 
in  their  wild  course  of  revenge  and  repression. 

Peter  Talbot,  who  was  mortally  ill  in  the  house  of  his  ])rotlier 
near  Dublin,  was  treated  as  a  conspirator,  and  by  order  of  the  Lord 
Lieutenant  brought  a  prisoner  to  Dublin  Castle  where  he  died,  a  con- 
fessor of  the  Faith,  and  an  illustrious  victim  to  Irish  officialism. 
Oliver  Plunket,  Archl^ishop  of  Armagh,  whose  gentle  virtues  and  un- 
conspiring  temper  Grmonde  was  familiar  with,  and  of  whose  inno- 
cence Grmonde  never  entertained  the  slightest  doubt,  was  also  seized, 


408  The  Cause  of  Inland. 

and  sent  a  prisoner  to  London,  where  an  infamous  judge,  on  the 
testimony  of  men  the  vilest  and  most  perjured,  condemned  the  Prelate 
to  he  hanged,  drawn  and  quartered  at  Tyburn,  a  sentence  which  was 
executed  July  1,  1681. 

Bitterly  did  Irish  Catholics  pay  for  the  supposed  sympathy  of 
Charles  11,,  and  for  the  known  Catholicity  of  his  brotlier,  the  Duke 
of  York. 

It  was  but  natural,  when  James  II.  ascended  the  throne,  that  he 
should  desire  to  lighten  the  burthen  laid  on  the  professors  of  his  own 
faith.  It  was  equally  so,  that  in  Ireland  the  persecuted  and  disfran- 
chised Catholics  should  look  for  redress  to  a  Catholic  King.  Unhap- 
pily, historians  in  treating  of  this  calamitous  reign  make  the  Catholic 
body  and  their  religion  responsible  for  the  political  blunders  and 
moral  shortcomings  of  the  Sovereign,  as  well  as  for  the  rashness,  the 
unwisdom,  and  the  utter  impolicy  of  the  acts  of  his  subordinates. 

The  800,000  Irish  Catholics,  the  Celtic  majority  of  them  in  par- 
ticular, never  acknowledged  Sir  Eichard  Talbot  as  their  agent,  their 
representative,  their  spokesman,  either  at  home  or  abroad,  either  in 
religious,  political,  or  personal  matters.  And  when  Sir  Eichard 
Talbot,  become  Earl  of  Tyrconnel,  was  appointed  successively  Com- 
mander-in-Chief of  the  royal  forces  in  Ireland,  and  Lord-Lieutenant, 
his  real  or  imputed  ofdcial  faults  should  not  be  assumed  to  be  those 
of  the  downtrodden  people  whose  wrongs  he  so  strongly  resented. 

That  James  did  not  want  to  unsettle  what  had  been  done  by  the 
Acts  of  Settlement  and  Explanation,  we  know  from  his  instructions 
given  to  Lord  Clarendon  when  appointed  Viceroy  in  Ireland.  This 
ceuntry  the  King  held  to  have  been  conquered  by  Cromwell  at  least, 
if  by  no  other  before  him.  The  English  Ascendancy  and  the  Act  of 
Settlement  were  to  be  considered  as  accomplished  facts,  not  to  be 
interfered  with.  But  among  the  Catholic  majority  of  Irishmen,  there 
were  meritorious  servants  of  his  royal  father  and  brother,  who  had 
been  wrongfully  dispossessed  of  their  property:  these  were  to  be 
righted.  The  Catholic  religion  must  be  freely  exercised.  The  vari- 
ous departments  of  the  public  service  must  be  open  to  Catholics  as 


Talbot  Ci)i)i promises  Ihi  Llsh  Catholics.  409 

well  as  to  Protestants,  lieligioii  must  not  be  a  disqualificatiou 
toward  the  enjoyment  of  civil  and  political  equality. 

Clarendon  raised  to  the  judicial  bench  three  Catholic  lawyers; 
others  were  appointed  members  of  the  Privy  Council;  others  again 
were  called  to  fill  the  offices  of  sheriff  and  magistrate;  and  a  relief 
fund  of  £2,190  a  year  was  created  for  the  twelve  Catholic  bishops. 

Tyrconuel,  Commander  of  the  Forces,  acted  with  his  character- 
istic impetuosity,  displacing  Protestant  officers,  and  giving  their 
commands  to  Catholics.  All  this,  though  but  a  small  measure  of 
justice  toward  the  immense  majority  of  a  nation,  was  ill-judged, 
and  precipitate. 

When  Tyrconuel  succeeded  Clarendon  as  Viceroy  (1687-89),  he 
openly  advocated  the  repeal  of  the  Acts  of  Settlement  and  Explana- 
tion. The  Protestant  Settlers  took  alarm  and  fled  to  the  Low  Coun- 
tries, where  they,  together  with  the  discontents  from  England,  urged 
upon  the  King's  nephew,  William  of  Orange,  to  take  the  lead  of  the 
revolt  or  revolution  which  was  already  ripe  in  both  England  and  Ire- 
laud.     He  was  not  slow  in  accepting. 

The  rest  is  well  known. 

The  Final  Struggle  between  the  "  Old"  and  the  ''New" 
English  Interests. 

Prominent  as  religion  is  in  the  revolution  of  1G89,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  in  the  mind  of  any  one  who  has  read  beneath  the  surface  of 
tlnngs,  that  the  question  of  religion,  in  Ireland  at  any  rate,  was  but 
secondary.  The  impelling  force  in  that  country  was  the  desire  on  the 
part  of  the  threatened  iVdventurers  and  Soldiers  to  retain  their  lands. 
The  advancement  of  Catholics  to  a  share  of  public  office,  and  the 
modification  of  the  charters  in  corporate  towns  admitting  Catholics  to 
burgess  rights  and  municipal  honors,  might  have,  at  a  later  period, 
and  among  another  generation,  been  regarded  with  some  degree  of 
equanimity.  As  Tyrconuel,  however,  agitated  the  question  of  restor- 
ing the  land  to  its  original  owners,  the  religious  question  became  at 
once  a  vital  social  and  political  one. 


410  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

The  struggle,  nevertheless,  between  the  Old  and  the  New  English 
Interests,  was  made  manifest  in  tlie  first  Irish  Parliament  convened 
by  James  himself,  when  he  landed  in  Ireland. 

In  the  Honse  of  Lords  sat  six  new  peers  created  by  James,  one 
only  of  Avhom,  Justin  Mac  Carthy,  Viscount  Mountcashel,  bore  a  Cel- 
tic name.  His  brother,  however.  Lord  Clancarthy,  was  a  peer  of  the 
old  creation.  In  the  House  of  Commons,  of  two  hundred  and  thirty- 
two  members  returned,  one  hundred  and  sixty-five  were  of  Anglo- 
Irish  stock,  and  sixty-seven  of  Celtic  extraction.  The  Parliament 
was,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  Anglo-Irish.  In  it  the  Old  English 
Interest,  representing  the  mass  of  proprietors  dispossessed  by  the 
Cromwellian  Settlement,  endeavored  to  repeal  the  legislation  which 
had  robbed  them  of  their  own  property.  The  King,  the  lawful  King 
of  England  and  Ireland,  Avas  present  in  Dublin.  The  laws  passed 
regarding  religion  were  strikingly  moderate  and  liberal  as  compared 
with  the  legislation  of  the  Protestant  Ascendancy.  The  Act  passed 
repealing  the  land-settlement  of  16C2-1665,  was,  everything  con- 
sidered, not  more  objectionable  than  the  Acts  it  proposed  to  reverse. 

The  misfortune  of  men  in  their  position  is  to  act  as  if  they  could 
count  on  the  certainty  of  no  future  change.  They  hasten  to  build  on 
the  quicksands  which  the  retreating  tide  has  left  bare;  and  seem 
never  to  suspect  that  the  rising  tide  may  or  will  certainly  overflow 
their  structure,  and  displace  every  stone  in  its  foundations  with  the 
sands  that  bear  them. 

Here  we  have  English  against  English,  the  defeated  Old  Interest 
has  resolved  to  be  even  with  the  New.  The  English  Parliament  of 
1652-53  had  accounted  as  rebels  not  only  the  Irish  Confederates  but 
all  who  in  Ireland  had  borne  arms  for  the  King.  This  view  had 
been  confirmed  by  the  Irish  Parliament  of  1662-65.  It  was  a  bad 
precedent;  and  now  in  1689  the  Anglo-Irish  majority  copy  this  prec- 
edent, and  pass  an  act  of  Attainder  against  all  who  support  the  cause 
of  William  of  Orange.  A  list  of  two  thousand  four  hundred  and 
forty-five  names  was  made  out,  comprising  two  archbishops  and  seven 
bishops,  sixty-four  temporal  peers,  eighty-three  clergymen,  and  two 


Enthusiastic  Ansiuer  to  tlie  Call  to  Arms.  411 

thousand  two  liundred  and  eighty-nine  other  persons  of  both  sexes 
down  to  tradesmen.  The}^  did  not  bear  in  mind  that  there  would 
be  or  could  be  a  turning  of  the  tide. 

The  contest  in  Ireland  was  a  fierce  one,  complicated  once  more 
by  unappeasable  passions, — those  of  property,  religion,  and  race. 
William's  army  counted  recruits  from  every  part  of  Europe,  men 
who  had  to  complain  of  Catholic  governments,  and  who  came  to 
help  the  Protestant  English  and  Scotch  to  avenge  the  cause  of  the 
Pure  Gospel,  the  blood  of  Protestants  shed  in  1641,  and  in  tlie  fresh 
massacres  attributed  to  the  Irish;  men  who  would  perhaps  accept  as 
their  reward  a  share  of  the  lands  to  be  forfeited  by  the  defeated  Cath- 
olics.* In  the  north  of  Ireland  the  dreadful  scenes  of  the  late  war 
were  renewed.  Derry  was  relieved  by  Kirke;  and,  at  Newtown-But- 
ler, the  royal  forces  under  Berwick  were  defeated  by  the  Ennis- 
killeners,  who  gave  no  quarter  and  pitilessly  slaughtered  2,000  men. 
Then  came  Schomberg  with  his  recruits.  And  James,  who  had  not 
in  his  composition  a  particle  of  the  heroic,  fled  from  Ireland  to 
France,  leaving  the  Irish  Catholics  to  their  fate. 

The  Celts,  who  having,  this  time,  a  King  of  their  own  and  come 
to  fight  at  their  head,  hailed  with  incredible  enthusiasm  this  un- 
hoped-for opportunity  for  restoring  their  idealized  and  worshiped 
nationality,  flocked  to  the  royal  standard  in  large  numbers.  In  the 
best  of  times,  and  when  the  Island  was  all  their  own,  our  Celtic  fore- 
fathers accustomed  themselves  to  a  life  in  the  open  air,  which  with 
their  simple  and  wholesome  diet,  secured  to  them  that  strength  of 
body,  that  prodigious  agility  and  endurance,  described  by  Einuccini 
and  his  Secretary.  The  generation  of  Celts  who  had  grown  up  since 
their  day,  had  been  bred  to  hardship  such  as  none  other  had  ever  en- 
dured in  that  land.  The  young  men  were  left  nothing  to  admire  but 
the  memory  of  Erin's  patriotic  dead,  the  feats  of  the  Tories  who  still 
defied  all  Governments  in  their  wild  life  of  independence, — the  war- 

*  "  Foreign  mercenaries — Danes,  Swedes,  Dutch,  Swiss,  Fins,  Brandenburgers, 
French  Hug^uenots — the  Protestant  Churches  of  Northern  Europe  come  to  meet  the 
Eoman  Catholics  in  an  Irish  Armageddon." — Walpole,  "Kingdom  of  Ireland." 


413  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

like  renown  of  their  brethren  and  kinsmen  in  France,  Austria,  and 
Spain. 

Unarmed  and  half-clad,  the  descendants  of  Swordmen  and  Wood- 
kerne  hastened  to  answer  the  call  to  arms.  And  from  abroad  came 
the  veteran  oflficers  and  soldiers  of  Owen  O'Neill  and  the  Confeder- 
ates. Oh!  the  happiness  to  fight  together  on  Irish  soil  for  all  that 
Irish  nationality  most  cherishes,  the  freedom  of  religion,  and  the 
freeing  of  the  country  from  the  domination  of  the  Saxon.  "Before 
long  fifty  regiments  were  enrolled.  Men  seemed  to  start  out  of  the 
ground;  but  food,  clothing,  and  munitions  of  war  were  not  so  speedily 
forthcoming.  The  French  oflficers  who  had  come  over  with  the 
King,  were  astonished  at  the  destitution  that  everywhere  prevailed. 
There  was  no  bread  to  be  had;  the  soldiers  were  living  on  horse  flesh; 
their  pay  Avas  a  penny  a  day.  Half  armed  with  pikes  and  muskets 
unfit  for  use,  sometimes  bareheaded  and  barefooted,  equipped  in 
ragged  regimentals,  they  were  ill-prepared  to  meet  in  the  field  the 
well-fed,  well-armed  troops  of  different  nationalities,  brilliant  in  their 
new  uniform,  which  were  mustering  in  the  North  for  service  under 
William  of  Orange.  It  was  the  forlorn  hope  marching  out  once 
more.  Victory  was  impossible  under  such  circumstances,  even  to 
those  '  very  great  scorners  of  death,^  who  defended  the  Bridge  of 
Athlone,  and  who,  when  cannon  balls  were  served  to  them  at  Anghrim, 
where  musket  bullets  were  required,  tore  the  buttons  from  their  coats 
and  fired  them  with  the  ramrods  of  their  guns  in  the  faces  of  their 
assailants."  * 

Beaten  at  the  Boyne,  and  deserted  by  the  King,  who,  a  coward 
himself,  accused  the  Irish  of  cowardice,  the  untrained  Irish  bands  did 
not  forget  what  was  due  to  themselves.  They  had  fought  for  James, 
to  be  sure;  but  they  had  chiefly  fought  for  Ireland.  Had  they  been 
commanded  by  a  prince  of  the  genius  and  firmness  of  character  of 
William,  the  issue  might  have  been  a  very  different  one.  We  re- 
member the  words  of  Sarsfield  to  his  English  adversaries:  "Change 
kings,  and  we  will  fight  you  again." 

*  Mrs.  Atkinson,  "  Life  of  Mary  Aikenhead,"  Introd.,  23-24. 


Triumph  of  the  New  Interest.  413 

They  fought  magnificently  behind  the  walls  of  Limerick  under 
that  same  Patrick  Sarsfield,  "even  the  women  flinging  stones  and 
broken  bottles  in  the  hottest  of  the  fight."  William,  baffled  then, 
had  his  revenge  before  long.  Be  it  recorded  to  his  honor  that  he 
wished  to  spare  the  nation  any  more  bloodshed,  offered  the  Catholics 
the  free  exercise  of  their  religion,  half  the  churches  in  the  Kingdom, 
and  one-half  of  their  ancient  possessions.  It  was  a  promise  which  no 
English  King  could  make  good.  William's  power  lay  in  being  the 
armed  chief  of  the  New  English  Interest.  The  men  who  supported 
him  and  fought  for  him,  would  have  deserted  liim,  fought  against 
him,  and  driven  him  from  the  three  Kingdoms,  the  moment  he  began 
to  compromise  with  the  Catholics  or  to  touch  the  domination  of  the 
Protestant  Ascendancy,  or  to  threaten  the  unsettlement  of  the  Acts 
of  1G62-65. 

The  Irish  knew  that,  and  made  no  answer;  and  besides  they  were 
again  deceived  by  the  hopes  of  French  aid.  The  French  aid  came 
with  St.  Euth,  and  proved  more  of  a  curse  than  a  blessing.  The 
fatal  battle  of  Anghrim  followed,  and  was  lost  by  the  Irish.  No 
quarter  was  given  them  in  the  flight  from  the  battle-field.  Seven 
thousand  stripped  corpses  whitened  the  plain  for  miles  in  every 
direction. 

Then  fell  Limerick,  and  William  had  his  revenge  upon  the  de- 
fenders. Not  an  unsoldierly  or  unkingly  revenge,  however:  he 
granted  fair  terms  to  the  besieged,  and  that  these  terms  were  not 
kept,  was  not  his  crime,  but  that  of  the  New  English  Interest. 

Limerick  capitulated,  and  the  Treaty  which  bears  that  name  was 
signed,  on  October  3,  1691.  It  consisted  of  two  sets  of  articles,  the 
military  and  the  civil.  The  former  permitted  all  officers  and  sol- 
diers, as  well  as  "rapparees  or  volunteers,"  in  the  Irish  quarters  to 
embark  with  their  families,  household  goods,  plate  and  jewels  for  any 
place  beyond  the  seas,  the  English  government  providing  free  trans- 
portation. 

The  civil  articles,  signed  by  Sarsfield  and  the  Lords  Justices, 
stipulated  such  liberty  for  the  Catholic  religion  as  the  Irish  laws  per- 


414  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

mitted  and  as  Catholics  enjoyed  nnder  Charles  II.;  the  King  and 
Queen  promising  to  procure  from  the  Irish  Parliament  further  secur- 
ity for  the  exercise  of  that  religion.  The  inhabitants  of  Limerick  and 
of  other  garrisoned  towns  still  held  by  the  Irish,  all  officers  then  in 
arms  under  a  royal  commission,  and  all  the  "protected"  in  the  vari- 
ous counties  held  by  King  James'  troops  were  to  be  maintained  in  the 
possession  of  all  their  rightful  property,  movable  and  immovable, 
held  by  them  in  the  reign  of  Charles  II.  The  people  were  to  be  free 
to  follow  their  trades  and  avocations.  And  a  general  pardon  was  to 
be  extended  to  all  who  should  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  new 
sovereigns. 

"Although  the  King,"  says  Count  Murphy,  *' appears  to  have  been 
well  disposed  at  first  to  keep  faith  in  the  matter,  he  did  not  attempt 
to  control  the  action  of  the  Parliament  of  England  therein;  and, 
accordingly,  the  treaty  was  shamefully  violated  in  these  partic- 
ulars." 

And  yet  William  confirmed  the  Treaty  by  Letters  Patent ! 

"Scarcely  had  the  Articles  of  Limerick  been  signed,"  says  the 
historian  "Wright,  "when  they  became  the  subject  of  contention  and 
discontent.  The  Protestant  Party  lamented  the  opportunity  lost  of 
entirely  crushing  the  Irish  Papists;  and  many  were  disappointed 
that  a  part  of  the  spoils  to  be  furnished  by  confiscation  was  given 
up." 

Before  the  month  had  elapsed  in  which  the  Treaty  was  signed, 
the  English  Parliament  abrogated  the  law  about  oaths  of  allegiance  in 
Ireland,  imposing  a  new  Test  Oath  which  excluded  Catholics  from 
either  House  of  the  Legislature. 

This  was  rigorously  enforced  in  Ireland  in  1692. 

At  the  same  time  all  superior  officers  in  the  army  were  required 
to  dismiss  from  their  respective  commands  all  Papists.  Then,  in 
Ireland,  followed  proclamations  disarming  the  Catholics  and  offering 
rewards  to  all  who  should  discover  arms  in  their  homes.  There  was 
no  need  of  such  rigors. 

Famine  was  again  abroad  in  Ireland.     "  There  have  died  in  that 


Iloio  tlie  Treaty  of  Limcriclc  u'as  Ratified.  415 

kingdom/'  sa3's  Stoiy,  "since  first  the  Irish  began  to  play  their  mad 
pranks,  of  one  sort  or  another,  at  least  100,000,  3'oung  and  old, 
besides  treble  the  number  that  are  rained  and  undone." 

The  defeated  Ii'ish  had  enough  to  do  to  resign  themselves  to  the 
further  humiliation  and  loss  of  hope  entailed  by  the  issue  of  the 
war,  not  to  plot  new  risings  or  conspiracies.  The  greater  religious 
freedom  promised  them  by  the  Treaty  of  Limerick,  proved  to  be  only 
a  mirage  in  the  desert.  All  over  the  island  they  were  helplessly  in 
the  hands  of  their  enemies.  The  burthen  of  oppression,  instead  of 
being  lightened,  was  intolerably  aggravated. 

In  1695,  the  Irish  Parliament,  exclusively  composed  of  representa- 
tives of  the  New  Interest,  undertook  to  ratify  the  Treaty  in  their  own 
way,  so  modifying,  mutilating  and  perverting  the  stipulations  favora- 
ble to  the  Catholics, — that  the  Bill  embodying  the  articles  was  a 
mockery  of  that  confirmed  by  the  King's  letters-patent. 

The  Lord  Deputy  Capel  in  opening  the  Parliament  "reminded 
them  of  the  great  obligations  under  which  they  lay  towards  their 
Protestant  Monarch;  how  he  had  come  in  person  to  assist  them,  had 
fought  their  battles,  and,  Avith  the  risk  of  his  own  life,  restored  them 
to  their  religion  and  estates.  He  told  them  that  the  King  now 
called  them  together  in  Parliament  in  order  that  by  reasonable  and 
necessary  Jaws  they  might  prevent  the  like  dangers  in  time  to  come, 
and  secure  themselves  and  their  posterity  on  the  surest  foundations. 
.  .  .  Lord  Capel's  promise  of  extraordinary  security,"  Wright  con- 
tinues, "to  be  derived  from  some  oi  the  bills  recommended  to  them, 
was,  no  doubt,  an  allusion  to  the  new  Penal  Statutes  against  the 
Catholics,  of  which  several  very  harsh  ones  were  passed  within  a  short 
space  of  time.  Some  of  these  were:  an  Act  to  restrain  foreign  edu- 
cation; an  Act  for  the  better  securing  the  Covernment  by  disarming 
Papists;  an  Act  for  banishing  all  Papists  exercising  any  ecclesiastical 
jurisdiction,  and  all  Eegulars  of  the  Popish  Clergy  out  of  the 
Kingdom;  an  Act  to  prevent  Protestants  intermarrying  with  Papists; 
and  an  Act  to  prevent  Papists  being  Solicitors.  Some  of  these  Acts 
were  contrary  to  the  letter,  as  well  as  to  the  spirit,  of  the  Treaty 


416  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

of  Limerick,  which,  nevertheless,  was  confirmed  by  this  same  Par- 
liament. "  * 

In  the  Parliament  of  1697,  further  acts  were  passed  which  were 
in  open  violation  of  the  Treaty,  such  as  several  bills  for  protecting 
and  strengthening  the  Protestant  Interest,  and  securing  the  forfeited 
estates,  and  repressing  the  Papists.  It  also  passed  the  famous  Eap- 
paree  Act,  under  cover  of  which  such  atrocious  persecution  was  after- 
ward exercised  on  the  rural  Catholic  population. 

Again  in  September,  1G98,  the  legislative  measures  enacted  as 
precautions  against  Popery,  were  still  more  formal  violations  of  the 
treaty  obligations,  while  they  paved  the  way  to  the  Penal  Laws  to 
prevent  the  Spread  of  Popery.  "Their  first  act  was  to  confirm  the 
estates  and  possessions  held  and  enjoyed  under  the  Acts  of  Settlement 
and  Explanation.  They  next  proceeded  to  prepare  a  bill  for  en- 
couragement of  plantations  and  improvements.  Others  were  de- 
signed to  prevent  the  estates  of  Protestants  from  coming  to  Papists, 
and  to  encourage  persons  to  turn  Protestants." 

It  was  all  to  strengthen  and  increase  the  New  Interest,  which,  of 
course,  was  the  Protestant  Ascendancy  allied  with  the  Cromwellian 
Proprietors. 

But  let  us  see  how  the  relative  conditions  of  both  Catholic  and 
Protestant  landholders  then  stood. 

"We  have  seen,"  says  Count  Murphy,  "that,  by  the  Acts  of  Set- 
tlement and  Explanation,  2,323,809  statute  acres  of  profitable  lands 
were  granted  or  disposed  of  to  the  Irish,  they  having  600,000  pre- 
viously in  their  possession.  Of  these  lands,  1,060,792  plantation 
acres,  equal  to  1,723,787  statute  acres,  were  escheated  under  Wil- 
liam. .  .  .  This  forfeiture  reduced  the  property  of  the  Catholic  Irish 
to  1,240,022  acres  of  profitable  land.  William  restored  to  persons 
whom  he  pardoned  by  special  favor,  125,000;  and  the  Court  of 
Claims  restored  to  Catholic  proprietors  388,500,  making  the  total . 
possessed  by  the  Irish  Catholics  only  1,753,522  statute  acres.  So 
much  for  the  promise  to  confirm  the  Irish  in  their  possessions! 
*  "  Hist,  of  Ireland,"  vol.  ii.,  pp.  273,  274. 


What,  became  of  the  Men  of  Ireland.  417 

"  The  number  of  Irish  outlawed  bj^  William  '  on  account  of  the  late 
rebellion,' since  Feb.  13,  1G88,  were  3,931,  whereas  there  were  only 
fifty-seven  persons  outlawed  by  him  in  England.  Tlnnr  outlawry, 
notwithstanding  the  royal  promise  in  the  Treaty  of  Limerick,  re- 
mained unreversed,  and  they  lost  their  estates  for  ever! 

"This  was  the  last  of  the  confiscations,  the  final  settlement  if  we 
may  so  call  it,  of  the  property  of  Ireland.  Of  the  12,500,000  stat- 
nte  acres  of  profitable  land  in  the  island,  little  more  than  1,750,000 
now  remained  in  the  hands  of  Irish  Catholics;  considerably  over 
10,000,000  belonged  to  the  English  and  Protestants."* 

King  William  was  very  liberal  in  bestowing  enormous  grants  of 
the  lands  escheated  to  the  Crown  to  the  men  who  had  aided  him  in 
his  Irish  wars  and  to  other  favorites.  Lord  Eomney  got  49  517 
acres;  Keppel,  Earl  of  Albemarle,  108,633  acres;  William  Bentink 
hen-  to  the  Buke  of  Portland,  135,820  acres;  Guikle,  Earl  of  Ath- 
lone,  26,480  acres;  Eouvigny,  Earl  of  Galway,  36,148  acres;  and 
95,649  acres  to  a  lady  favorite,  the  Countess  of  Orkney. 

Eight  years  after  the  war  was  concluded  the  English  Parliament 
offended  with  the  King,  ordered  an  inquiry  into  this  division  of  the 
spoils,  reconfiscated  the  whole  of  the  forfeited  Irish  lands,  made  it 
over  to  thirteen  trustees  and  had  it  sold  at  anction  for  the  benefit  of 
the  State. t  "So  wholesale  and  complete  had  been  the  transfer  of  the 
land,"  says  Walpole,  "from  the  Roman  Catholic  proprietors  to  the 
Protestants,  that  at  the  beginning  of  the  18th  century,  when  the  era 
of  summary  confiscation  by  forfeiture  may  be  said  to  close,  the  for- 
mer were  the  owners  of  less  than  one-seventh  of  the  whole  area  of 
Ireland."  I 

^  It  was  a  pitiful  spectacle  which  Ireland  beheld  after  the  fall  of 
Limerick.  The  massacres  which  had  taken  place  at  Newtown-Butler 
and  Athlone,  told  Irishmen  all  too  plainly  what  their  bravest,  even  on 
the  battle-field,  in  honorable  warfare  under  the  banner  of  their  law- 

*  "  Ireland  Industrial,"  Ac,  pp.  317,  318. 

t  English  Statutes,  11  and  12  Will.  III.,' c.  5. 

i  "  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p.  329. 


418  Tlie  Cause  of  Ireland. 

ful  King,  might  expect  from  enemies,  to  whom  no  law,  no  principle 
seemed  sacred  in  dealing  with  Catholics,  with  Irish  Catholics  espe- 
cially. If  no  quarter  was  to  be  expected  for  the  soldier  in  defeat, 
what  pity  would  be  shown  to  the  disarmed,  the  defenceless  ? 

The  struggle  ended,  3,000  Irish  soldiers  were  induced,  most 
unhappily  for  themselves,  as  it  afterwards  proved,  to  enlist  in  the 
service  of  King  William.  20,000  with  their  officers  set  sail  for 
France,  some  on  board  the  French  fleet,  which  had  arrived  too  late 
to  save  Limerick;  some,  with  Sarsfield,  sailed  from  Cork;  the  Eng- 
lish Government  sent  over  the  rest  to  the  Continent.  Woful  was  the 
parting  of  husbands  and  parents  from  wives  and  famihes,  and  the 
departure  of  all  from  the  land  which  the  very  extremity  of  ill-fortune 
only  rendered  more  dear  to  these  brave,  true  hearts.  Then  was 
formed  in  France  that  "Irish  Brigade"  of  5,000  men  who  made 
their  name  immortal  on  so  many  battle-fields.  Why  wonder  that  the 
very  name  of  France  is  almost  as  dear  to  Irishmen  as  that  of  then- 
native  land,  when  it  is  remembered  that  450,000  died  fighting  far 
the  Kingdom  of  St.  Louis  between  1691  and  1745  ? 

So  fared  it  with  some  only  of  the  men  of  Ireland  under  the 
murderous  regime  inaugurated  in  1G91  by  the  New  English  Interest 

in  Ireland. 

And  the  men  who  remained  at  home?  There  were  and  could 
be  but  comparatively  few  of  the  young  and  able-bodied  left  after 
all  these  disasters,  all  that  awful  destruction  of  human  life,  which 
we  have  only  glanced  at,  but  which  authentic  history  details. 


II. 

The   Protestant  Ascendancy  and  the  Land 
Question   (1698-1798). 

1.   Tlie  Penal  Lmos. 

npHERE  would  be  very  little  benefit  to  tlie  reader  from  a  recital 
of  all  the  legislative  enactments  devised,  from  1692  to  1727, 
to  complete  the  absolute  outlawry  of  Irish  Catholics  on  their  own 
native  soil, — or,  to  state  the  case  more  exactly  and  comprehensively, 
to  outlmv  the  Irish  Nation  in  Ireland.  So  far  as  such  a  thing  could 
be  done,  the  legislators  did  it  effectively,  and  they  were  zealously 
assisted,  in  the  execution  of  their  laws,  by  the  entire  English  Colony 
in  Ireland,  churclmien  and  laymen. 

It  has  been  said  of  this  Penal  Code:  " It  was  a  machine  of  wise 
and  elaborate  contrivance;  and  as  well  fitted  for  the  oppression, 
impoverishment,  and  degradation  of  a  people,  and  the  debasement 
in  them  of  human  nature  itself,  as  ever  proceeded  from  the  per- 
verted ingenuity  of  man."  *  This  was  said  by  Edmund  Biu-ke. 
Elsewhere  he  said  of  that  Code:  "To  render  men  patient  under  a 
deprivation  of  all  the  rights  of  human  nature,  everything  which 
could  give  them  a  knowledge  or  feeling  of  those  rights  was  rationally 
forbidden.  To  render  humanity  fit  to  be  insulted,  it  was  fit  that  it 
should  be  degraded."  f 

This  process  of  degradation  was  most  thorough.  As  we  are  chiefly 


*  "  Works  of  Edmund  Burke,"  vol.  iii.,  p.  495.  t  IIMem,  p.  438. 

(419) 


420  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

concerned,  in  this  part  of  our  case,  witli  tlie  relations  which  the  Penal 
Laws  established  between  the  masses  of  the  Irish  People  and  the 
Land,  we  omit  going  into  the  analysis  of  that  portion  of  the  Code 
which  deprived  the  Irishman  of  his  religious  and  political  freedom. 
In  1704,  an  Act  was  passed  providing,  that  any  person  who  perverted 
a  Protestant  should  be  guilty  of  prcemvnii'e,  that  is,  would  incur  the 
penalties  of  treason;  and  any  one  who  sent  an  infant  (a  person  under 
age),  without  licence,  to  be  educated  beyond  the  seas,  would  be  dis- 
abled from  suing  in  law  or  equity,  from  being  guardian,  executor,  or 
administrator,  from  taking  a  legacy  or  deed  of  gift,  from  bearing 
office;  and  moreover,  such  person  would  forfeit  for  life  all  goods  and 
lands. 

This,  of  course,  aimed  at  watching  the  conscientious  Catholic  at 
every  turn,  profiting  by  his  performance  of  what  he  considered  to  be 
his  most  sacred  duties,  to  take  from  him  not  only  whatever  was  left 
him  of  his  civil  rights,  but  every  shred  of  his  landed  property. 

If  the  son  of  a  Catholic  father  chose  to  conform  to  the  Established 
Church,  any  court  might  appoint  a  Protestant  guardian  to  such  a 
child,  and  make  an  order  for  his  maintenance  and  education  from  his 
father's  estate.  No  Papist  could  be  even  his  own  son's  guardian 
under  a  penalty  of  £500. 

When  a  Catholic's  eldest  son  thus  turned  Protestant,  and  the 
father  held  his  land  in  fee,  the  son,  ipso  facto,  became  the  tenant  in 
tail  of  the  paternal  estate,  and  the  father  was  only  a  tenant  for 
life.* 

In  1775,  when  the  American  war  compelled  the  Government  to 
relax  somewhat  of  their  intolerable  rigor  toward  the  Irish  Catholics, 
the  latter  addressed  a  remonstrance  to  George  III.  on  the  baneful 
effects  of  this  last  statute.  "By  the  laws  now  in  force  in  this  King- 
dom," they  say,  "a  son,  however  undntiful  or  profligate,  shall  not 
merely  by  the  merit  of  conforming  to  the  established  religion  deprive 
the  Roman  Catholic  father  of  that  free  and  full  possession  of  his 


*  2  Anne,  c.  6.     "  Irish  Statutes,"  vol.  iv.,  p.  14. 


Banished  from  Cities  and  Towns.  421 

estate,  that  power  to  mortgage,  or  otherwise  dispose  of  it,  as  the 
exigencies  of  his  affairs  may  require;  but  shall  himself  have  full 
liberty  immediately  to  mortgage  or  otherwise  alienate  the  reversion  of 
that  estate  from  his  family  for  ever; — a  regulation  by  which  a  father, 
contrary  to  the  order  of  nature,  is  put  under  the  power  of  his  son, 
and  through  which  an  early  dissoluteness  is  not  only  suffered  but 
encouraged,  by  giving  a  pernicious  privilege,  the  frequent  use  of 
which  has  broken  the  hearts  of  many  deserving  parents,  and  entailed 
poverty  and  despair  on  some  of  the  most  ancient  and  opulent  famiUes 
in  this  Kingdom."* 

"Every  Papist  was  to  be  disabled  from  purchasing  land,  or  hold- 
ing any  mortgage  on  land;  and  even  from  taking  a  lease  of  more  than 
thirty-one  years;  nor  could  he  hold  such  a  lease,  unless  a  rent  was 
paid  by  him  of  full  two-thirds  the  annual  value. 

"No  Papist  after  February  1,  1703,  unless  he  should  conform 
within  six  months,  should  be  capable  of  taking  any  estate  by  descent, 
devise,  gift,  remainder,  or  trust.  But  such  estate  should  during  his 
life,  or  till  his  apostasy,  pass  at  once  to  the  next  Protestant  heir. 
Advowsons  belonging  to  Papists  vested  in  the  Crown  until  the  owners 
should  conform. 

"It  was  also  provided  that  no  Papist  should  vote  at  an  election 
without  taking  the  oaths. 

"No  person  should  hold  office,  civil  or  military,  without  taking 
the  oaths  and  subscribing  to  the  declaration  against  transubstantia^ 
tion,  and  receiving  the  sacrament  on  Sunday  in  tlie  Church. 

"No  Papist  was  in  future  to  take  up  his  residence  in  Galway  or 
Limerick,  and  those  now  inhabiting  were  to  give  security  for  their 
good  behavior.  .  .  . 

"  This  searching  statute  was  still  evaded  by  the  ingenuity  of  the 
legal  profession,  by  the  devotion  of  friends,  and  the  straining  of  the 
conscience  by  a  pretended  conforming.  Accordingly  the  Statute-book 
was  again  amended;  and  a  further  appeal  made  to  the  self-interest  of 

*  Quoted  by  Count  Murphy  in  his  "  Ireland,"  p.  322, 


422  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

the  family  circle  and  the  outside  public,  to  ruin  the  Roman  Catholic 
owners  of  land."  * 

Such  was  the  celebrated  Act  of  2  Anne,  c.  6. 

Six  years  later,  in  1709,  a  second  Act  was  passed  to  make  this 
process  of  confiscation  more  effective  still. 

"All  securities  by  mortgage,  judgment,  or  otherwise,  to  cover  a 
lease  or  conveyance  to  a  Catholic,  contrary  to  the  above  enactment, 
were  declared  void,  as  to  such  Catholic  or  any  purchaser  in  trust  for 
him,  and  the  lands  and  such  securities  might  be  sued  for  by  any 
Protestant,  in  law  or  equity,  who,  on  proof,  should  obtain  verdict, 
and  be  put  in  possession  of  the  lands  and  securities. 

"  So  that  if  a  Catholic  purchased  an  estate  for  a  term  of  more  than 
thirty-one  years,  or  subject  to  a  rent,  to  be  by  him  paid,  of  less  than 
two-thirds  of  the  improved  annual  value  at  the  time  of  sale,  any  dis- 
coverer (that  is,  common  informer),  being  a  Protestant,  might  claim 
the  said  estate  and  all  collateral  securities  connected  therewith,  and 
should,  on  proof,  be  put  in  possession  tliereof,  by  a  decree  of  the 
judges  of  any  of  her  Majesty's  courts  of  law!"  f 

"It  was  made  laAvful  for  any  common  informer  to  prefer  a  bill  in 
Chancery  to  compel  any  person  to  discover  any  secret  trusts  which 
had  been  created  in  favor  of  Papists.  Any  issues  of  fact  were  to  be 
tried  by  a  jury  of  known  Protestants,  and  upon  a  decree  in  his  favor 
he  was  at  once  entitled  to  the  lands  affected  by  the  trust. 

"No  Papist  was  thenceforth  to  be  callable  of  taking  an  annuity 
chargeable  on  land."  % 

"  A  Protestant  woman  with  any  estate  or  interest  in  lands,  or  £500 
personal  estate  or  more,  marrying  a  Catholic,  he  was  declared  in- 
capable of  holding  such  estate  or  interest,  which  should  thereupon  go 
to  the  next  of  kin  who  was  a  Protestant;  and  the  said  Protestant  next 
of  kin  might  sue  for  and  recover  the  same,  as  if  legally  entitled  to  the 
same,  as  heir  to  such  woman  so  marrying,  who,  to  that  purpose, 
should  be  deemed  dead  in  law. 

*  "  The  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  pp.  339,  340. 
+  "  Ireland  Industrial,"  &c.,  p.  323. 
X  "  The  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p.  341. 


DAiSlIEL       O' CONN  ELL. 

PROM  TUB    PORTRAIT    BT  J   HAVBR.TY:   E  Hi 


Artliur  CLeai'ij — the  Outlmo.  423 

"Sucli  woman  and  her  husband  were  declared  incapable  of  being 
heir,  executor,  administrator,  or  guardian  to  any  Protestant.  So 
Avhere  a  Protestant  woman  married  a  Catholic,  she  was  deprived  of 
the  right  of  guardianship  to  her  own  son,  being  a  Protestant,  and 
tliat  son  was  offered  a  strong  inducement  at  any  time  to  sue  his 
parents  for  tlie  estate,  to  dispossess  them,  and  enter  on  tlie  enjoyment 
of  it  himself  ! 

"  Any  Protestant  marrying  a  Popish  wife  was  deemed  a  Papist  or 
popish  recreant,  and  was  declared  for  ever  afterwards  disabled  and 
incapable  of  being  heir,  executor,  administrator  or  guardian  to  any 
person  or  persons  whatever,  and  also  disabled  to  sit  in  Parliament,  or 
bear  office  or  employment. 

"The  penal  laws  were  commonly  called  Laws  of  Discovery;  for,  as 
we  have  just  seen,  they  were  based  on  a  principle  which  encouraged 
the  wife  or  child  to  discover  against  the  husband  or  parent,  the  lay- 
man against  his  clergyman,  the  friend  against  his  friend,  the  servant 
against  his  master;  the  reward  of  the  discoverer  being  that  he 
received  a  large  portion  of  the  fine  inflicted  or  the  whole  of  the  prop- 
erty confiscated.  What  system  could  have  been  devised  more  debas- 
ing and  more  demoralizing,  at  the  same  time  that  it  was  most  ably 
planned  to  meet  the  odious  ends  intended  !  .  .  . 

"A  melancholy  illustration  of  the  working  of  the  penal  laws  is 
afforded  by  the  fate  of  Arthur  O'Leary,  'the  outlaw,' whose  tomb 
may  be  seen  in  the  venerable  abl^ey  of  Kilcrea,  in  the  county  of  Cork, 
about  twelve  miles  west  of  the  city.     The  inscription  is  as  follows  : 

Lo!  Artliur  Learij,  generous,  handsome,  hrave. 
Slain  in  his  bloom,  fills  this  ^intimely  grave. 

Died  May  4th,  1773,  aged  26  years. 

Mr.  O'Leary  was  a  gentleman  of  considerable  personal  property,  but 
being  a  Catholic,  he  could  hold  no  real  estate.  He  had  been  an  offi- 
cer in  the  Hungarian  army,  and  was  married  to  a  daughter  of 
Daniel  O'Connell  of  Derrynane  Abbey,  grandfather  of  the  Liberator. 


424         -  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

We.  are  told  by  the  local  historian  that  on  his  becoming  resident  in 
Ireland  his  influence  over  the  peasantry  of  his  old  patrimonial  dis- 
trict excited  the  jealousy  of  Mr.  M — ,  one  of  its  landed  proprietors — 
a  jealousy  increased  in  consequence  of  one  of  his  horses  having  won  a 
race  against  a  horse  of  Mr.  M — 's.  This  led  to  a  quarrel.  Mr.  M — 
availed  himself  of  the  oppressive  laws  then  existing  against  the  Cath- 
olics, and  attempted  a  legalized  robbery,  by  publicly  claiming  from 
O'Leary,  after  the  race,  the  horse  which  had  won  it — tendering  to 
him  the  price,  five  guineas,  awarded  for  a  Papist's  horse.  O'Leary 
refused  compliance,  saying  'he  would  surrender  him  only  with  his 
life.'  A  scuffle  ensued,  and  O'Leary  was  glad  to  escape  by  flight. 
Meanwhile,  by  an  extraordinary  process,  he  was  proclaimed  by  two 
magistrates  an  outlaw,  on  the  spot;  and  on  his  return  home  in  the 
evening,  he  was  shot  dead  at  Carriganimy,  by  soldiers  who  were 
placed  in  ambuscade  to  intercept  him.  The  penal  laws  followed  him 
in  death.  Interments  within  monastic  grounds  were  then  prohibited, 
and  O'Leary  was  buried  in  a  field  outside  the  abbey,  where  the  body 
lay  for  several  years. "  * 

Mr.  "Walpole  sums  up  the  spirit  and  effects  of  this  abominable 
legislation  in  the  following  words  : 

"At  the  commencement  of  Queen  Anne's  reign,  it  was  found  that, 
like  every  other  severe  and  unjust  law,  the  penal  Acts  were  largely 
evaded;  and  the  'Protestant  Ascendancy'  believed  that  the  mischief 
which  they  sought  to  counteract,  could  be  overcome  by  fiercer 
statutes.  Accordingly,  in  grossest  breach  of  the  Limerick  treaty, 
the  savage  Acts  of  the  second  and  eighth  years  of  Anne  were  passed, 
which  were  so  carefully  drawn  as  to  leave  no  possible  loophole  for 
escape,  if  they  could  have  been  drastically  administered.  The  ©bject 
of  these  statutes,  besides  the  strengthening  of  those  already  in  force, 
was  to  insure  the  withdrawal  from  the  hands  of  the  Eoman  Catholics 
the  fragments  of  the  land  to  which  they  still  clung;  and  to  make  it 
impossible  in  future  that  they  should  ever  acquire  a  title  to  a  single 


*  "Ireland  Industrial,"  Ac,  pp.  324-326. 


Degrading  the  Nation  by  enforced  Poverty.  425 

acre.  To  secure  this  end,  these  statutes  made  inevitable  the  gradual 
cutting  up  and  dispersioii  of  the  estates  of  Roman  Catholics;  deprived 
thorn  of  the  power  of  settling  their  land,  or  disposing  of  it  by  will; 
even  broke  up  in  some  cases  settlements  already  made;  and  provided, 
a  ready  machinery  by  which  unscrupulous  children  and  unfaithful 
wives,  by  the  simple  process  of  apostatizing,  and  even  the  lowest  com- 
mon informer,  could  tear  to  pieces,  or  transfer  to  themselves,  both 
the  income  and  the  property  of  every  unfortunate  landowner  who  ad- 
hered to  the  religion  of  their  fathers." 

We  pause  here  to  consider  these  moral  enormities  which  dis- 
graced a  Christian  nation  in  a  century  boasting  of  its  philosophic 
spirit,  and  its  conquests  over  intolerance. 

It  is  a  fact,  then,  that  one  principal  aim  of  these  dreadful  laws 
was,  not  only  to  get  out  of  "the  hands  of  the  Eoman  Catholics 
(of  Ireland,  that  is,  the  Irish  Nation)  the  fragments  of  the  land  to 
which  they  still  clung";  but  "to  make  it  impossible  in  the  future 
tliat  tliey  should  ever  acquire  a  title  to  a  single  acre!'''' 

So,  it  was  not  enough  that  the  old  tribal  formation  of  the  Irish 
should  have  been  destroyed  utterly  and  for  ever, — that  the  tribal 
chiefs  of  every  rank  had  been  exterminated  or  driven  from  Ireland 
almost  to  a  man,  ':liat  the  tribesmen,  that  is,  the  Irish  People,  had 
been  dispossessed,  when  they  could  not  be  exterminated  in  their 
native  districts, — that  they  had  been  driven  to  a  distant  part  of  the 
Island,  or  forced  to  hide  and  live  in  the  woods  and  morasses, — and 
then  left  with  no  more  legal  or  human  right  to  occupy  one  foot  of  their 
native  soil  than  the  wolf  that  skulked  in  their  mountain  7vilds.  They 
had  no  rights  in  Ireland  that  any  man,  woman,  or  child  was  bound 
to  respect. 

More  than  that;  it  was  attempted  by  this  ferocious  legislation,  to 
take  away  from  the  few  Celtic  and  Anglo-Irish  proprietors  left,  not 
only  every  foot  of  soil  they  still  owned,  but  every  possibility  of  ever 
again  holding  in  fee  simple  a  single  acre. 

It  was  sought  to  degrade  the  Nation,  first,  by  extreme  poverty,  by 
the  absolute  dependence  and  misery  of  slaves.     Poverty  is  neither  a 


436  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

sin  nor  a  shame  to  those  on  whom  it  falls  without  fault  of  their  own, 
directly  or  indirectly.  But  where  a  famil}^  where  a  whole  class, 
where  an  entire  people  are  condemned  perforce,  by  systematic  and 
irresistible  oppression,  to  extreme,  helpless,  hopeless  ])overtij, — it  means 
for  them  degradatiok. 

This  was  the  fate  to  which  the  Land  System  imposed  by  Cromwell 
and  the  Commonwealth,  confirmed  by  the  restored  Stuarts,  by  Wil- 
liam, by  Anne,  and  her  successors,  the  Georges, — condemned  the 
Irish  Nation. 

The  legislatioii  which  we  have  been  describing,  and  which  was 
devised  to  secure  the  perfect  and  permanent  working  out  of  that  sys- 
tem, may  have  been  repealed  wholly  or  in  part  within  the  last  cen- 
tury.    The  Sj'stera  had  then  done  its  work. 

And  this  System  exists  in  Ireland  to  this  day.  It  is  against  it 
that  the  Irish  People  are  now  struggling  with  the  energy  of  a  man 
who  has  been  fighting  long  with  a  wild  beast,  and  holds  it  half-stran- 
gled, fearing  the  while  that  his  own  strength  may  give  out  ere  tbe 
victory  be  complete. 

But  do  we  try  to  form  anything  like  a  correct  notion  of  the  stun-t- 
ing  of  every  faculty,  the  debasement  of  every  noble  sentiment,  tlie 
quenching  of  all  higher  aspirations,  and  the  degradation  of  the  whole 
life  of  a  man,  the  whole  existence  of  a  family  and  a  population,  inev- 
itably consequent  upon  extreme  poverty  ? 

Why  our  North  American  Indians,  so  long  as  they  possess,  in  the 
immense  tracts  of  our  Western  Territories,  the  active  exercise  of  the 
chase,  the  rude  but  manly  and  invigorating  sports  handed  down  by 
one  generation  to  another,  and  the  abundant  and  wholesome  food 
which  the  hunting-grounds  supply, — are  splendid  specimens  of 
physical  strength  and  beauty.  Hereditary  freedom,  besides,  gives 
to  the  savage  cliaracter  more  than  one  feature  of  greatness.  But  let 
that  same  race  be  subjected,  for  a  generation  or  two,  to  the  dreadful 
trials  of  hunger,  and  the  enforced  dwelling,  for  nine  months  in  the 
year,  in  huts  scarcely  fit  for  the  brute, — will  they,  in  the  third  and 
fourth  generation,  preserve  the  lofty  stature,  the  manly  strength,  the 


The  Irish  Peasantry  reduced  to  the  Savage  State.  427 

intellectual  vigor  of  the  Sioux  or  the  Comauche,  of  the  Ilui'on  or 
the  Iroquois  ? 

What  has  the  oppressive  and  pitiless  Land  System  bequeathed  to 
Ireland  by  Cromwell  and  William  III.,  and  consolidated  and  fortified 
round  about  by  the  Penal  Laws— like  the  brick  mass  of  the  Pyramid 
of  Cheops  clothed  outside  from  top  to  base  with  imperishable  granite, 
— what  has  it  left  to  the  Irish  Catholic  tenantry — tenants-at-will 
all  of  them — to  live  upon  ?  At  the  moment  I  write  this  are  not 
thousands  upon  thousands  of  them  liable  to  be  cast  forth  on  the 
roadside  to  die  of  starvation,  unpitied  and  unhelped  by  their 
landlords? 

Unquestionably  the  effect  of  this  legislation,  if  not  the  purpose  of 
the  legislators  themselves,  was  to  reduce  the  Irish  peasantry  to  the 
condition  of  savages.  Even  to  this  day,  the  great  bulk  of  these 
tenants-at-will  and  farm-laborera  are  forced  to  live  in  hovels  not  one 
degree  above  the  wigwam  of  the  savage,  or  the  burrow  of  the 
Esquimaux.  Have  we  ever  reflected  on  the  many  elevating  influences 
of  a  civilized  home, — of  a  warm,  comfortable,  cleanly,  orderly  tlwell- 
ing, — on  the  habits,  the  manners,  the  whole  life  of  its  inmates?  Have 
we  ever  paused  to  calculate,  on  leaving  these  wretched  tenements  in 
which  Irish  farm-laborers  are  permitted  to  live,  or  in  which,  in  the 
suburbs  and  outskirts  of  city  and  town  throughout  the  land,  the  great 
masses  of  our  laboring  poor  are  born  and  live  and  die, — of  how  much 
that  is  refining,  and  purifying,  and  strengthening,  and  elevating  the 
men  and  women  of  Ireland  have  been  deprived  for  centuries — for 
centuries!  And  you,  landlords  of  Ireland,  you  upholders  of  this 
Protestant  Ascendancy,  will  turn  round  and  taunt  this  people 
with  being  savages !  Have  you  not  done  your  best  to  make  them 
so  ? 

You  will  stop  me  in  my  argument  to  say:  But,  Jong  before  the 
Penal  Days,  long  before  the  Cromwellian  Settlement,  in  the  time  of 
James  I.  and  of  Elizabeth,  do  not  English  travelers  in  Ireland 
describe  tlie  Irish  Kerns  and  Creaghts, — the  bulk  of  the  rural  popu- 
lation, as  living  in  huts  no  whit  better  than  the  hut  of  the  Savage  ? 


428  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Is  it  not  in  such  huts  that  the  Jesuit  Campion  found  them  early  in 
the  reign  of  Elizabeth  ?  And  has  he  described  them  as  a  civilized 
people  ? 

I  answer :  In  the  first  years  of  Elizabeth,  and  through  the  reign 
of  her  sister,  Mary,  and  during  the  long  reign  of  their  father,  had 
the  English  rulers  of  Ireland,  and  the  Anglo-Irish  nobles  and  gentry 
of  the  Pale,  done  nothing  to  disturb  the  populations,  in  the  districts 
described  by  Father  Campion  ?  Had  the  lands  of  the  people  on  the 
borders  of  the  English  colonies  not  been  like  the  low-lying  tracts  on 
the  sea-shore,  alternately  covered  by  the  inundating  waters,  and  left 
dry  by  the  retiring  tide?  What  husbandman  could  sow  or  reap  on 
such  a  soil,  or  build  a  permanent  and  secure  home  on  what  was  as 
unstable  as  the  quicksands  in  the  path  of  a  torrent,  or  the  confluents 
of  two  great  rivers  ? 

Without  mentioning  the  raids,  the  burnings,  the  harryings  of 
Lord  Deputies  and  the  March  Lords  under  the  two  last  Henrys, 
think  of  what  Philip  and  Mary  did  in  Offaly  and  Leix,  in  Fercal  and 
Ely.  "The  natives  were  either  shot  down  in  the  field,  or  executed 
by  martial  law,  and  the  remnants  driven  into  the  neighboring  bogs 
and  mountains,  where  for  a  few  years  longer  they  prej'ed  upon  the 
settlers,  and  in  their  turn  were  hunted  as  brigands  and  put  to  death 
as  outlaws."  Under  Henry  VIII.,  we  know  what  ravages  were  com- 
mitted all  through  the  centre  and  the  south  of  Ireland  by  Lord 
Leonard  Gray;  and  what  were  the  effects  the  desolating  wars  pro- 
voked between  the  Butlers  and  the  Geraldines.  In  what  part  of  the 
fairest  and  most  fertile  districts  of  Ireland  was  the  land  allowed  to 
rest  from  the  scourge  of  these  armed  hordes  passing  and  repassing 
continually,  and  making  it  impossible  for  the  people  to  count  on  a 
single  season  of  uninterrupted  tranquillity?  "The  Plagues  of  Egypt," 
says  Sir  John  Davies,  "though  they  were  grievous,  were  but  of  short 
continuance;  but  the  plagues  of  Ireland  lasted  four  hundred  years 
together.  This  extortion  of  coin  and  livery  (practiced  by  the  English 
commanders)  produced  two  notorious  effects:  first,  it  made  the  land 
waste;  next,  it  made  the  people  idle:  for  when  the  husbandman  had 


Ignorance, — another  agency  for  degrading  Ireland.  429 

labored  all  the  year,  the  soldier  in  one  night  consumed  the  fruits  of 
all  his  labor." 

But,  after  all,  were  these  people  savages  whom  Father  Campion 
found  with  their  herds  and  flocks,  living  as  best  they  might  among 
the  woods,  morasses,  and  mountain  wildernesses,  to  which  their  op- 
pressors had  driven  them  ?  Campion  describes  the  life  they  led  with 
no  friendly  joen.  But  he  cannot  withhold  the  eloquent  fact  that  their 
youth  were  nobly  ambitious  of  learning,  and  that  they  were  no  unapt 
scholars.  Was  it  their  fault  that  the  Eeformation  suppressed  the 
monasteries  and  schools  spared  by  medieval  wars,  and  from  the  land 
the  revered  masters  of  letters  and  science  ?  And  will  the  apologists 
of  the  Penal  Laws  and  Protestant  Ascendancy  dare  to  taunt  the  Irish 
people  with  their  ignorance  as  Avell-as  their  poverty? 

For  absolute  ignorance  was  counted  on  as  certainly  as  extreme 
indigence  to  break  down  the  spirit  of  a  proud,  independent,  and 
intellectual  race,  and  to  reduce  them  to  the  abject  and  passive  con- 
dition of  the  animal  tamed  by  hunger,  made  submissive  to  the  hand 
that  throws  it  a  bone  by  the  terrible  instincts  awakened  by  starvation. 
It  is  possible  to  narrow  for  man  as  well  as  for  the  brute  every  thought 
and  every  activity  down  to  the  mere  circle  of  the  food  for  the  day. 

Do  not  talk  to  us  of  the  civilization  imported  into  Ireland  by 
Elizabeth  when  it  is  averred  that  her  wars  swept  out  of  existence  one- 
half  the  population  of  the  island,  that  is  A  million  of  human  beings. 
Has  the  civilizing  reign  of  Queen  Victoria  been  productive  of  more 
civilizing,  humanizing  results? 

But  the  word  ignorance  has  been  uttered  in  connection  with  the 
Penal  Laws  as  the  second  and  surer  means  of  degi*ading  all  classes  of 
Irish  Catholics,  of  making  the  mass  of  the  nation  content  with  the 
poverty  and  dependence  in  which  they  were  placed  by  the  operation 
of  these  laws. 

It  is  necessary  that  we  should  examine  carefully  this  count  also  in 
our  indictment. 

By  the  Statute  of  7th  WiUiam  IIL  c.  4  (1695),  Papists  were  for- 
bidden to  teach  school  either  publicly  or  in  private  houses,  except  to 


430  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

one's  own  children,  under  a  penalty  of  £20  fine  and  three  months' 
imprisonment;  and  this  statute  was  only  repealed  in  1782.  As  we 
have  seen  a  few  pages  above,  to  send  their  children  to  be  educated 
abroad  was  to  incur  the  loss  of  civil  rights,  of  office,  goods,  and  lands 
for  life. 

"A  Papist  schoolmaster  was  to  be  liable  to  the  same  penalties  as  a 
Papist  '  Eegular ';  and  no  person  was  to  be  qualified  to  be  a  school- 
master unless  he  should  take  the  oaths  at  the  assizes  or  sessions.  .  .  . 
This  ferocious  statute  goes  on  to  enact  the  most  endeavors  to  stamp 
out  their  religion;  it  endeavors  at  any  rate  to  secure  the  helplessness 
of  ignorance  for  the  Eoman  Catholics,  if  their  conversion  could  not 
be  achieved."* 

In  good  families,  in  such  at  least  who  had  managed  to  save  from 
the  general  wreck  some  small  portion  of  their  fortune,  it  was  possible, 
if  it  were  not  easy,  for  parents  to  teach  their  children.  But  what 
facilities,  what  possibilities  were  left  to  the  poor  to  procure  for  their 
dear  ones  the  boon  of  education  ? 

Not  only  were  parents  who  sent  their  sons  to  be  educated  abroad 
thus  punished  by  all  manner  of  disability,  but  so  were  all  persons 
who  made  any  remittance  of  money  or  goods  for  the  maintenance  of 
any  Irish  child  educated  in  a  foreign  country.  "But  here,"  says  Mrs. 
Atkinson,  "tjie  old  love  of  learning  stimulated  the  Irish,  and  made 
them  fertile  in  resource.  Gentlemen's  sons  were  sent  to  seaports  pro- 
vided with  indentures  of  apprenticeship  to  friendly  merchants,  who 
took  care  of  them,  watched  for  a  safe  opportunity,  and  despatched 
them,  ostensibly  on  commercial  business,  to  a  foreign  port,  whence 
they  made  their  way  to  the  college  in  which  they  were  to  receive 
their  education.  Or,  they  got  down  to  the  remote  parts  of  the  coast, 
and  were  taken  off  by  the  smugglers,  who  anchored  under  the  shadow 
of  the  sea-washed  headlands  to  exchange  at  their  leisure  a  cargo  of 
clarets  and  brandies  for  the  wool  which  the  Irish  were  prohibited 
from  exporting  to  England,  and  forbidden  to  manufacture  into  sale- 

*  "  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  p.  342. 


The  Iledge-Scliools.  431 

able  goods  at  home.  Aspirants  to  tlie  Priesthood  embarked  with  the 
'  wild  geese,' — the  recruits  for  the  Irish  Brigade — in  a  like  hazardous 
fashion:  or  got  away  in  fishing  boats  frequenting  these  coasts;  and 
were  satisfied  if  landed  anywhere  on  the  Continent,  being  fully  pre- 
pared to  trudge  across  mountain  and  plain  with  their  faces  turned 
toward  Santiago  or  Salamanca,  Lisbon  or  Louvain.  The  return  home 
svas  effected  through  the  same  friendly  agency.  Priests,  friars,  and 
the  alumni  of  the  secular  colleges  were  smuggled  into  their  native 
island  Avith  the  rest  of  the  contraband  freight. 

"Scholars  of  humbler  rank,  and  others  who  could  not  reach  the 
Continent,  repaired  to  the  hedge-schools  for  instruction.  It  was  the 
pursuit  of  knowledge  under  difficulties.  Master  and  scholars  assem- 
bled in  the  safest  spot  they  could  find:  on  the  sheltered  side  of  a 
hedge,  in  a  dry  ditch,  or  on  the  edge  of  a  wood,  and  worked  away  at 
the  '  Three  E's,'  the  classics  and  their  native  tongue,  prepared  in 
dangerous  times  to  hide  their  books  and  disperse  over  the  country  at 
a  moment's  notice.  .  .  .  This  open-air  school  system  was  not  felt  as 
too  great  a  hardship  by  people  who  were  denied  the  shelter  of  a  roof 
when  they  gathered  round  the  altar  of  their  God;  and,  besides,  out- 
of-door  studies  had  been  the  rule  in  the  good  old  times:  their  great 
saints  and  great  scholars,  and  the  foreign  youths  who  flocked  to  the 
classes  of  the  famous  teachers  had  made  their  studies  under  the  vault 
of  heaven,  only  amid  more  peaceful  siirroun dings.  Cardinal  New- 
man, speaking  in  his  '  Historical  Sketches'  of  the  ancient  Irish,  says: 
It  is  imjjossible  not  to  admire  and  venerate  a  race  wMcli  dis^jlayed 
such  an  unextinguishahle  love  of  science  and  letters.  Their  descend- 
ants in  the  eighteenth  century  manifested  the  same  noble  ardor,  and 
are  entitled  to  the  same  esteem.  And,  what  is  worthy  of  remark,  the 
peasantry  imbibed  the  same  taste  as  their  social  superiors,  and  became 
athirst  for  a  kind  of  knowledge  which  it  was  almost  impossible  they 
could  ever  turn  to  practical  account.  The  Munster  people  excelled 
all  others  in  taste  for  learning,  and  Kerry  was  believed  to  have  the 
best  of  schools.  Thither  resorted  students  from  other  parts  to  share 
the  advantages  enjoyed  by  the  young  mountaineers.     The  •'  ditches 


432  Vic  Cause  of  Ireland. 

full  of  scholars '  wliioli  Arthur  Young  tells  us  he  often  saw  in  his 
travels  through  Ireland,  had  many  lads  among  them,  who,  when 
they  got  enough  Latin,  meant  to  sail  away  and  read  their  theology  on 
the  Continent.  Munster,  in  fact,  was  a  sort  of  preparatory  school  for 
Salamanca.  In  those  days  Latin  was  freely  spoken,  especially  in 
Kerry.  Boys  were  often  met  with  on  the  lonely  hill-sides  conning 
their  Homer,  and  runners  and  stable-boys  in  the  service  of  the  Prot- 
estant gentry  could  quote  for  you  a  verse  of  Horace,  or  season  their 
remarks  with  a  line  from  Virgil.  Dr.  Smith,  in  his  '  History  of 
Kerry,'  observes  that  classical  reading  '  extends  itself  even  to  a  fault 
among  the  lower  orders  in  Ireland,  many  of  whom  have  a  greater 
knowledge  in  that  way  than  some  of  the  better  sort  in  other 
places.'"* 

Hear  what  the  latest  historian  of  these  disastrous  times,  Mr. 
Walpole,  says  upon  this  very  subject.  He  is  describing  Ireland  in 
1760;  he  notes  the  fatal  working  of  the  Ignorantist  Laws: 

"Half  a  century's  experience  of  the  Penal  Laws  had  left  its  mark 
on  the  Koman  Catholic  population.  The  poorer  classes  were  more 
attached  to  the  persecuted  religion  than  ever,  and  at  the  same  time 
sunh  in  hopeless  ignorance.  All  education  emanating  from  Roman 
Catholic  sources  was  forbidden  by  law;  none  was  provided  from  any 
other  source;  and  but  for  the  persevering  energy  of  the  registered 
priests,  who,  despite  the  penal  code,  in  the  wilder  country,  ventured 
to  open  schools,  and  in  the  less  remote  districts  taught  the  ragged 
children  the  elements  of  education  in  the  fields  and  by  the  roadside, 
every  spark  of  religion  and  knowledge  would  have  died  out  from  end 
to  end  of  the  island.  The  patient  persistence  of  the  Eoman  clergy 
was  very  remarkable.  The  intention  of  the  penal  laws  was  that,  no 
fresh  clergy  being  permitted  to  enter  Ireland  and  the  ordaining  pow- 
ers being  banished,  the  then  existing  registered  clergy  should  gradually 
die  out,  and  so  the  race  of  priests  become  extinct."  f 

So,  half  a  century  of  enforced  ignorance,  added  to  the  terrible 

*  '•  Mary  Aikenhead,  her  Life,  her  Work,  and  her  Friends,"  pp.  51-53  . 
t  "  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  pp.  370,  371. 


Wiat  they  gave  Ireland  instead  of  the  Old  Religion.         433 

poverty  of  their  condition,  had  done  its  work  among  our  noble  Celtic 
people.  In  spite  of  the  heroic  devotion  of  their  hunted  priests,  who 
taught  the  "ragged  children"  what  they  could,  and  when  and  where 
they  could,  the  people  seemed  sunk,  or  fatally  doomed  to  be  "sunk 
in  hopeless  ignorance." 

And  yet  the  descendants  of  that  doubly  oppressed,  doubly  fam- 
ished race, — famished  in  soul  as  well  as  in  body, — are  at  the  present 
moment  crowding  the  schools  of  every  grade,  and  displaying,  with 
the  inherited  hunger  for  knowledge,  an  aptitude  for  mastering  it 
Avhich  is  the  wonder  of  Englishmen  themselves. 

If  English  statesmen, — if  the  English  people,  Catholics  as  well 
as  Protestants, — had  only  learned  to  appreciate  all  these  priceless 
qualities  and  noble  aptitudes  !  If  they  could  have  divested  them- 
selves in  time  of  the  stupid  prejudices  of  race,  and  birth,  and  edu- 
cation, and  seen  in  the  Celtic  nature  its  wealth  of  intellectuality, 
its  noble  aspirations,  its  deep  and  generous  affections,  what  could 
they  not  have  helped  to  make  of  Irishmen  and  of  Ireland?  And 
now  all  the  accumulated  wrongs  of  ages  are  beginning  to  threaten 
retribution.  .  .  .  Brute  force  has  begotten  the  desire  of  isassionate 
revenge.  .  .  . 

We  quote  the  testimony  of  a  non-Catholic  writer. 

"Not  by  all  the  penal  laws  against  Roman  Catholic  priests  could 
it  be  hoped  by  the  most  fanatical  disciple  of  brute  force,  that  the  old 
faith  could  be  ever  supplanted  by  the  new,  so  long  as  the  condition  of 
the  English  Church  in  Ireland  continued  to  be  nothing  else  but  a 
scandal.  While  there  were  no  less  than  three  thousand  registered 
Roman  Catholic  priests,  there  were  for  all  the  parishes  in  the  island 
but  six  hundred  resident  Protestant  incumbents,  and  of  these  six 
hundred  the  large  majority  were  wretchedly  poor,  their  incomes 
being  but  about  £100  per  annum,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  they 
were  all  pluralists,  some  holding  as  many  as  twelve  or  thirteen  bene- 
fices. Numbers  of  parishes  had  no  church  at  all,  or  only  a  battered 
ruin,  in  which  no  service  was  ever  performed.  Few  had  schools,  and 
the  few  Protestant  families  who  were  to  be  found  in  the  south  and 
28 


434  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

west,  were  left  to  shift  for  themselves,  and  in  course  of  time  fell 
away. 

"The  bishops,  on  the  other  hand,  had  absorbed  all  the  church 
revenues,  and  were  wealthy.  The  land  belonging  to  the  Irish  sees 
was  estimated  at  623,598  Irish  acres,  or  998,000  English  acres,  about 
one-nineteenth  of  the  entire  soil  of  the  island.  All  of  them  of  the 
extreme  Laudian  type,  they  had  through  good  and  evil  times  preached 
the  doctrine  of  passive  obedience;  and  though  from  their  experiences 
under  James  they  had  had  reason  to  modify  these  ideas,  they  still 
continued  Jacobites  at  heart,  and  were  ever  the  rallying  point  of  dis- 
affection to  the  house  of  Hanover.  Their  political  influence  was  very 
considerable.  As  members  of  the  Upper  House,  which  the  absentee 
system  had  largely  depleted  of  its  lay  element,  they  were  an  important 
and  impracticable  faction,  which  the  Government  were  constantly 
compelled  to  humor.  Ecclesiastical  influences  had  always  been  re- 
markably felt  in  the  Dublin  Privy  Council,  the  primate  for  the  time 
being  filling  the  office  of  a  lord-justice  in  the  absence  of  the  lord- 
deputy  or  lord-lieutenant. 

"In  proportion  to  the  smallness  of  the  influence  of  the  Church 
upon  the  mass  of  the  people  was  the  jealousy  shown  by  the  bench  of 
bishops  towards  the  Presbyterians.  1'he  bitterness  and  injustice  with 
which  the  latter  had  been  attacked  in  the  reign  of  Charles  II.  was 
redoubled  in  the  reign  of  Anne.  A  clause  had  been  slipped  into  the 
penal  statute  of  the  Second  of  Anne  by  the  English  Privy  Council,  as 
a  sop  to  the  bishops  to  secure  their  adherence  to  the  bill,  imposing 
the  test  on  ^^on-conformists  as  well  as  on  Roman  Catholics.  The 
taking  of  the  saci'ament  according  to  the  rites  of  the  Episcopal 
Church  was  made  a  condition  precedent  to  their  holding  any  office 
civil  or  military  above  the  rank  of  a  constable,  and  by  this  means 
every  Dissenter  was  sTibjected  to  the  same  disabilities  as  a  Roman 
Catholic.  Armed  with  a  new  Test  Act,  the  bishops  hastened  to 
extirpate  schism.  Non-conformists  were  cleared  out  of  Derry  and 
Belfast,  and  dismissed  from_  the  commission  Gt  the  peace  in  Ulster. 
They  were  prohibited  from  opening  a  school.     Their  marriages  were 


Industrial  "Traps'''  for  Catlwllc  Children.  435 

attacked  and  declared  void;  and  men  were  prosecuted  in  the  Con- 
sistory Courts  as  fornicators  for  living  with  their  own  wives.  Even 
the  Kegium  Donum,  an  annual  subvention  granted  to  the  Presbyterian 
clergy  by  King  William  as  an  acknowledgment  of  their  loyalty  and 
determination  in  1688,  was  suspended. 

"All  the  elforts  of  the  Government  to  repeal  the  Test  Clause,  or 
even  to  pass  a  Toleration  Act  to  secure  to  them  the  use  of  their 
chapels,  were  rejected  through  the  violence  of  the  bishops  in  the 
Upper  House,  and  it  was  not  till  after  the  exposure  of  the  Jacobite 
rascality  on  the  death  of  the  Queen,  and  the  fall  of  Bolingbroke  and 
the  Tory  party,  and  after  the  Irish  bench  had  been  leavened  by  the 
appointment  of  pliant  men  from  England,  that  a  meagre  Toleration 
Act  took  its  place  upon  the  statute  book.  Even  this  did  not  stem 
the  stream  of  emigration  to  New  England,  and  a  steady  drain  went 
on  of  the  best  blood  of  the  north  to  join  their  Puritan  kinsmen  in  a 
land  where  liberty  of  conscience  was  respected,  l^or  was  the  con- 
dition of  the  parish  clergy  improved.  The  only  sign  of  activity 
was  an  effort  made  by  the  Protestant  laity  in  1733,  under  the 
auspices  of  Archbishop  Boulter,  to  found  industrial  schools  under  a 
royal  charter  in  different  parts  of  the  country,  where  the  cliildren  of 
the  poorest  Roman  Catholics  were  taught,  fed,  and  clothed,  and 
apprenticed  to  a  trade."  * 

These  schools  were,  of  course,  only  proselytizing  traps  baited  for 
unwary  or  desperately  needy  Catholics.  ISTothing  was  done  to  im- 
prove the  condition  either  of  the  Protestant  masses  or  tlieir  parochial 
clergy.  Now,  with  the  wealth  and  intolerance  and  supineness  of  the 
Protestant  Episcopal  body  contrast  that  of  the  poor  persecuted  Catho- 
lic clergy  and  their  Bishops. 

"The  secular  priests  returned  from  their  foreign  colleges  to  the 
scene  of  their  apostolic  labors,  and  lived,  when  the  times  were  suf- 
ficiently peaceful  to  allow  of  their  doing  so,  dispersed  in  the  obscure 
quarters  of  cities  and  towns,  and  in  the  farm-houses  throughout  the 
f-  ^, 

*  "  The  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  pp.  358-360. 


436  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

country;  while  tlie  friars,  after  going  througli  tlieir  novitiate  in  the 
Dominican  houses  at  Lisbon,  Toledo,  or  Rome,  or  in  the  Franciscan 
convents  of  Italy,  Germany,  and  Flanders,  made  their  way  to  the 
ruins  of  the  monasteries  of  their  orders,  took  up  their  abode,  two  or 
three  together,  in  a  thatched  corner  of  choir  or  aisle;  or,  failing  this, 
built  cabins  for  themselves  within  sight  at  least  of  the  roofless  church 
and  the  silent  belfry,  and  waited  until  better  times  enabled  them  to 
take  a  farm  and  live  on  it  without  apprehension,  while  perhaps  doing 
parish  duty  in  their  district. 

"The  bishops  were  fortunate  when  they  possessed  a  modest 
thatched  dwelling  in  a  retired  part  of  their  diocese  or  an  obscure 
quarter  of  the  episcopal  city.  Dr.  O'Grallagher,  while  bishop  of 
Raphoe,  was  obliged  to  seek  refuge  in  one  of  the  small  islands 
of  Lough  Erne,  where,  dressed  in  peasant  costume,  '\\q  secured 
amongst  the  humble  but  trusty  clansmen  of  the  Gallagher  sept,  a 
secure  asylum.'  In  this  retreat  'he  re-wrote  and  prepared  for  the 
press  the  fragmentary  sermons  which  he  had  from  time  to  time 
preached  in  Irish  to  the  flock  entrusted  to  his  pastoral  charge.' 
A¥hen  translated,  in  1737,  to  Kildare,  he  lived  in  a  village  in  the 
bog  of  Allen,  and  ordained  on  a  hill  some  young  priests  whom  he 
sent  to  finish  their  studies  to  France,  Spain,  or  Italy.  Members 
of  the  lordly  house  of  Butler  who  filled  the  archiepiscopal  see  of 
Cashel  in  the  last  century  were  poorly  housed  in  the  Galtee  moun- 
tains, in  the  vicinity  of  their  paternal  estates.  Dr.  James  Butler, 
who  died  in  his  eighty-third  year,  in  1774,  was  in  his  old  age  '  per- 
mitted to  dwell  quietly  in  a  humble  thatched  cabin,  which  occupied 
the  site  of  the  present  archiepiscopal  residence  in  Thurles.'  Hith- 
erto, almost  uninterruptedly,  the  Archbishops  of  Cashel  had  no  fixed 
place  of  residence;  their  pastorals  and  letters  are  all  dated  from  ou7' 
place  of  refuge.  Dr.  O'Callaghan  of  Ferns,  though  he  re'sided  in  his 
diocese,  had  to  assume  the  name  of  Walker,  in  order  to  conceal  him- 
self, and  to  save  his  life;  while  his  successor,  Dr.  Sweetman,  did  not 
escape  so  well,  but  was  taken  up  and  confined  in  the  Castle  of  Dublin 
on  a  malicious  charge  of  high  treason  during  the  administration  of 


How  the  Popes  helped  us  in  our  need.  437 

the  Duke  of  Portland  in  1752.  The  Primate,  Dr.  O'Reilly,  who  died 
in  1758,  resided  in  a  farm-house  near  Drogheda,  thereby  enjoying  a 
better  position  than  his  predecessor,  Dr.  McMahon,  who  occupied 
a  still  humbler  tenement,  and  went  by  the  name  of  Mr.  Ennis. 
Bishop  de  Burgo,  author  of  the  '  Hibernia  Dominicana,'  dwelt  in  a 
lowly  cottage  near  the  ruins  of  St.  John's  Abbey  in  Kilkenny.  In 
1757  there  met  by  stealth  in  the  castle  of  Trimbleston  seven  of  the 
Catholic  bishops  to  confer  on  matters  of  importance;  and  tradition 
says  that  these  prelates  were  clad  in  frieze  like  farmers,  in  order  to 
conceal  their  ecclesiastical  dignity. 

"All  through  these  troubled  times  the  bishops  and  clergy  of  Ire- 
land received  constant  and  liberal  remittances  from  the  Sovereign 
Pontiffs.  ' In  truth,' observes  Dr.  Renehan,  'some  provisions  of  the 
kind  must  have  been  made  by  the  Holy  See  for  the  ministers  of  re- 
ligion in  this  country,  or  else,  humanly  speaking,  they  would  have 
died  out  within  a  few  years — the  very  object  at  which  the  Govern- 
ment aimed  in  all  their  legislation.  These  pensions  were  forwarded 
regularly  from  Rome  until  Pope  Pius  VII.  was  driven  into  exile;  and 
the  bounty  of  the  Holy  Father  was  distributed  so  discreetly,  that  few 
except  the  Irish  bishops  themselves  seem  to  have  been  aware  that 
such  subsidies  were  received."  * 

Ireland  has  not  forgotten  the  generous  and  helpful  liberality  of 
such  Pontiffs  as  Gregory  XIII.  and  his  successors.  Now  that  the 
cloud  of  persecution  has  settled  over  Italy  and  Rome  itself,  and  that 
the  Holy  See  is  left  dependent  for  its  support  on  the  alms  of  the 
faithful,  Ireland  and  the  children  of  Ireland  dispersed  all  over  the 
globe,  will  not  be  apt  to  forget  the  fatherly  love  extended  to  their 
country  and  their  church  in  the  dark  days  of  their  own  need.  One 
prayer  only  would  Irishmen  address  to  the  Vicar  of  Christ,  that  he 
should  never  allow  England  to  stand  between  the  Holy  See  and  that 
people  in  all  Christendom  that  has  most  suffered  for  their  inviolable 
fidelity  to  the  Chair  of  Peter. 

**  The  Kingdom  of  Ireland/'  pp.  62,  63. 


4S8  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

We  cannot,  at  tliis  point  of  our  argument,  thrust  out  of  sight  the 
Church  Establisliment  by  which  England  wished  to  supplant  the  old 
religion  of  the  Irish  Celts  and  the  early  Anglo-Xorman  Colonists. 
To  do  so,  would  be  to  ignore  the  fact  that  the  oppression  exercised  on 
the  great  mass  of  the  Irish  nation  by  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church 
since  the  year  1534  and  down  to  1869, — was  one  of  the  most  crying 
injustices  of  the  English  domination. 

What  did  the  Church  imposed  by  Henry  VIII.  and  Elizabeth, 
propped  up  by  the  tyranny  of  the  Stuarts,  and  implanted  in  the  land 
like  a  vast  system  of  fortified  camps  by  William  III.  and  the  Britisli 
Parliament, — what  did  it  do  for  the  Irish  People  ?  What  pains  did 
it  take  to  evangelize  them  ?  What  agencies  were  employed  by  it  to 
heal  the  wounds  of  the  subject  race?  to  establish  the  reign  of  peace 
or  brotherly  love  between  them  and  the  English  Colony  ? 

One  finds  it  impossible,  in  studying  the  records  of  this  dark  period 
in  Ireland,  to  separate  the  existence  of  the  devoted  Irish  priests,  both 
secular  and  regular,  from  that  of  their  people,  from  that  of  the  peas- 
antry, more  especially.  Just  as  through  successive  centuries  of  trial 
and  struggle,  one  generation  of  Celts  bequeathed  to  the  next  the  task 
of  holding  fast  to  the  idea  of  nationality,  to  the  fatherland,  and  to 
the  ancestral  faith,  in  spite  of  all  enemies  and  difficulties,  so  did  each 
generation  of  Irish  priests  knowingly  and  lovingly  take  up  the  Cross 
and  through  it  animate  their  flocks  to  emulate  the  heroism  of  those 
who  had  gone  before  them. 

It  was  a  spectacle  never  before  beheld  by  the  civilized  world.  It 
is  the  noblest  struggle  in  all  history. 

But  w^e  must  let  others  beside  Catholics  portray  the  heroism  of 
these  men,  our  fathers  in  the  faith  as  well  as  in  the  flesh. 

"The  succession  of  priests,  who  for  the  most  part  received  their 
orders  from  the  Continent,  was  steadily  kept  up,  though,  according 
to  the  strict  interpretation  of  the  law,  after  the  clergy  originally 
registered  had  died  out,  every  priest  in  Ireland  was  liable  to  be 
hanged,  drawn,  and  quartered.  Besides  living  under  the  ban  of 
outlawry  the  Roman  Catholic  clergy  were  wretchedly  poor.     They 


A  Calnmnu  Refuted.  439 

!  Avere  supported  by  tlie  voluntary  contributions  of  their  poverty- 
stricken  parishioners.  Each  person  gave  Avhat  he  could,  some  a 
few  shillings,  more  but  a  few  pence,  and  those  who  could  not  spare 
money  gave  in  kind.  Small  collections  were  made  in  the  chapels  on 
Sundays:  the  sum  total  of  which  at  the  end  of  the  year  was  consid- 
ered handsome  if  it  amounted  to  a  pound.  The  whole  income  of  a 
parish  priest  did  not  come  to  more  than  thirty  or  forty  pounds,  and 
part  of  this  would  go  to  pay  a  curate.  Still  the  devoted  band  worked 
steadily  on,  a  startling  contrast  to  the  clergy  of  the  Establishment, 
doing  their  utmost  to  improve  the  condition  and  to  raise  the  moral 
tone  of  those  around  them,  and  only  rewarded  by  the  loyal  affection 
of  the  flocks  which  tliey  served  so  well. 

"On  the  whole  the  earth-tillers  deteriorated  less  than  the  gentry. 
The  latter  were  more  directly  affected  by  the  influence  of  the  penal 
code.  Their  self-interest  was  appealed  to;  their  truth  and  honesty 
were  undermined;  and  the  door  was  closed  to  every  ennobling  im- 
pulse. There  was  no  way  out  of  obscurity  for  ambition,  no  scope  for 
energy  and  enterprise,  except  at  the  price  of  the  surrender  of  what 
they  had  been  taught  was  necessary  to  their  salvation.  Sham  con- 
versions were  therefore  common.  By  the  year  1738  as  many  as  a 
thousand  Roman  Catholic  families  of  rank  had  nominally  joined  the 
Established  Church;  and  no  scruple  was  felt  hi  taking  the  oaths, 
when  perjury  could  be  atoned  for,  as  it  constantly  was,  by  a  small 
penance,  which  purchased  absolution  from  the  priest." 

AYe  have  inserted  these  last  words,  conveying,  unconsciously  no 
doubt  on  the  part  of  the  writer,  a  calumny  against  Catholic  morality 
often  repeated  and  as  often  triumphantly  refuted.  As  to  the  num- 
ber of  "persons  of  rank"  who  thus  apostatized — for  it  was  apostasy — 
we  say  nothing  at  present.  But  of  all  sins  which  a  human  being  can 
be  guilty  of,  apostasy  is  the  most  heinous,  since  it  is  a  denial  of  what 
one  knows  to  be  the  true  Eeligion  or  the  true  God.  Such  a  sin  is 
held  in  supreme  abhorrence  by  the  Church  and  her  children,  and 
visited  with  the  greatest  penalties  she  can  inflict.  In  no  supposable 
case,  could  tlie  apostate  adding  perjury  to  his   guilt,  "atone  by  a 


440  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

small  penance,"  or  thereby  "purchase  absolution  from  the  priest." 
This  is  all  downright  calumny.  Perjury  itself,  apart  from  the 
enormous  crime  of  apostasy  with  which  it  is  here  conjoined,  is  a 
deadly  sin  of  fearful  magnitude;  and,  so  far  as  we  know,  neither  God 
nor  man  wielding  His  delegated  authority,  does  or  can  absolve  from 
such  guilt  without  the  interior  sorrow  which  detests  and  abhors  the 
offence,  without  the  firm  will  to  atone  for  it  and  repair  it,  and  the 
equally  firm  resolve  never  to  admit  such  guilt  again.  There  is  no 
effective  pardon,  no  valid  absolution,  no  remission  of  sin  in  the  sight 
of  the  soul's  Creator,  unless  the  soul  turns  away  from  the  offense  with 
supreme  abhorrence  thereof,  and  turns  toward  tlie  offended  Majesty 
of  the  Most  High  and  Most  Holy  with  humiliation  and  sorrow  of 
spirit  proportionate  to  the  guilt. 

This  is  Catholic  doctrine,  as  well  as  the  teaching  of  sound  reason 
illumbied  by  the  light  of  faitli. 

That  many  of  the  Catholic  or  Anglo-Irish  gentry  should  cast  their 
lot  with  the  Protestants,  or  seek  some  way  of  reconciling  their  con- 
sciences with  their  interest,  is  likely  enough.  Protestant  human 
nature,  as  well  as  Catholic,  doubtless  furnishes  instances  of  such 
compromises.  But  these  are  not  sucli  as  the  Church  can  wink  at 
or  any  priest  make  light  of.  Mr.  Walpole  only  gives  way  here  to  a 
prejudice  all  too  common  among  his  non-Catholic  countrymen. 

With  this  explanation,  we  return  to  what  the  historian  says  about 
the  Irish  gentry  and  peasantry  in  those  calamitous  days. 

"Numbers  of  the  gentry,  thrown  back  on  a  vegetable  existence  in 
the  country,  lapsed  into  low  and  unworthy  habits,  and  spent  their 
lives  in  drinking  and  wagering,  with  no  idea  above  a  horse-race  or 
the  wiping  out  of  an  imaginary  insult  with  a  rapier  or  pistols.  Others 
finding  themselves  the  victims  of  the  law,  took  refuge  in  acts  of  open 
laAvlessness,  and  revenged  themselves  upon  the  English  strangers  by 
acts  of  shocking  violence.  .  .  . 

"The  great  curse  of  absenteeism,  which  had  from  the  earliest 
times  undermined  the  prosperity  of  Ireland,  grew  to  its  most 
monstrous  proportions.     It  was  calculated  that  as  much  as  one-third 


Terrible  Distress  of  the  Peasantry.  441 

of  the  whole  rental  of  Ireland  was  annually  drained  away  to  England 
for  the  support  of  absentee  landlords.  A  proposal  was  made  to  tax  the 
income  of  those  who  lived  abroad,  but  their  influence  was  strong 
enough  in  England  to  secure  the  rejection  of  the  bill.  The  great  land- 
owners lived  away  in  Bath  and  London,  with  no  other  thought  for  their 
Irish  properties  than  the  extraction  of  so  much  rent.  Whole  terri- 
tories were  leased  out  in  large  tracts  to  'middlemen,'  who  let  the 
land  again  at  exorbitant  rents  to  others,  who  sublet  again;  and  this 
process  was  repeated  till  the  estate  was  sometimes  underlet  six  deep. 
Or  the  property  was  managed  by  stewards  and  agents,  whose  orders 
were  to  remit  the  revenues  and  to  spend  not  a  penny  in  improve- 
ments of  any  description.  The  country  houses  fell  out  of  repair;  the 
woods  were  recklessly  cut  to  increase  the  revenue;  whatever  fencing 
or  reclamation  was  done  was  done  by  the  tenant,  and  done  with  as 
little  show  as  possible,  lest  the  keen  eye  of  the  agent  should  note  it, 
and  raise  the  rent  accordingly.  The  tenant  received  no  encourage- 
ment to  make  the  most  of  the  land.  His  position  was  too  insecure. 
Swift's  opinion  as  to  what  was  wanted  in  1729  was  'good  firm  penal 
clauses  for  improvements,  with  a  tolerably  easy  rent,  and  a  reason- 
able period  of  time.' " 

This,  however,  is  unsatisfactory  and  incomplete  with  respect  to 
the  landowners  and  we  shall  return  to  it  in  its  proper  place.  Now, 
as  to  the  peasantry: 

"It  was  in  1761  that  public  attention  first  became  directed  toward 
the  state  of  the  peasantry.  The  condition  of  the  earth-tillers  had 
been  rapidly  growing  worse  and  worse.  In  the  old  days  before  the 
plantations  they  had  been  little  better  than  serfs,  so  autocratic  had 
the  clan-chiefs  and  the  Anglo-Norman  lords  become;  but  the  tie  of 
family  and  old  association  was  strong,  and  one  faith  was  common  to 
both;  so  that  the  earth-tiller  followed  his  master  to  danger  and  death 
with  infrangible  fidelity.  Even  in  the  case  of  the  earlier  planters 
common  interests  had  established  a  friendly  feeling  between  the  new 
landowner  and  the  old  tenant.  But  the  later  confiscations,  especially 
those  after  the  war  of  1691,  created  a  gulf  between  the  old  tenant 


442  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

and  the  still  newer  landowner  whicli  was  never  bridged  over.  There 
was  no  bond  of  sympathy  between  them.  Of  different  faith  and 
different  habits,  the  newest  race  of  landlords  were  essentially  land 
speculators,  who  bonght  the  land  as  an  investment,  determined  to 
make  every  possible  shilling  out  of  their  purchase.  They  cared  not 
to  live  in  a  barbarous  island  among  strangers;  all  they  wanted  was 
their  rents;  and  the  tenantry  and  peasantry  never  saw  their  faces 
from  year's  end  to  year's  end.  The  landlords  who  were  extending 
grass-lands  wholesale,  managed  to  get  pasture  land  exempted  from 
the  payment  of  tithe,  so  that  this  hated  tribute  to  an  alien  church 
fell  wholly  on  the  growers  of  grain  and  roots.  The  wretched  tenants- 
at-will  were  transferred  to  the  tender  mercies  of  the  'middlemen,' 
who  raised  their  rents  to  swell  their  own  profits,  and  allowed  them  as 
a  set-off  the  run  of  the  open  waste.  The  grazing  fever  set  in,  the 
land  fell  out  of  cultivation,  so  that  according  to  Swift,  '  even  ale  and 
potatoes  were  imported  from  England  as  well  as  corn.'  The  rate  of 
wages  fell  to  nothing;  tlie  small  fanners  and  laborers  jvere  cleared  out 
of  the  country,  and  huddled  into  the  towns.  The  agents  then  en- 
closed large  tracts  of  what  had  hitherto  been  common  bog  and  moor, 
and  the  wretched  peasants  who  now  counted  among  their  number 
the  descendant  of  many  an  old  proprietor,  who  had  squatted  on  what 
was  once  his  own  domain,  and  who  carefuhy  devised  by  his  will  to  his 
sons  and  grandsons  the  ancestral  acres  of  which  he  was  no  longer  the 
possessor,  were  driven  from  the  bit  of  rough  pasture  on  which  they 
had  been  accustomed  to  turn  out  a  pig  or  a  cow. 

"  Eackrented  by  the  remorseless  middlemen,  squeezed  out  by  the 
narrowing  cultivable  lands  and  hunted  from  the  comm.on,  they  at 
length  took  the  law  into  their  own  hands,  and  thought  in  their  igno- 
rance, that  justice  could  be  achieved  by  means  of  a  secret  society. 
In  the  dark  nights  of  the  winter  of  1761  and  the  spring  of  1762, 
mysterious  parties  of  men  with  white  shirts  over  their  clothes  sped 
over  the  counties  of  Cork,  Limerick,  Waterford,  and  Tipperary,  pull- 
ing down  the  fences,  levelling  the  banks,  and  digging  up  acres  and 
acres  of  the  pasture.     As  the  terror  grew  which  they  inspired,  they 


Secret  Societies  spring  tip  where  there  is  no  redress  for  Wrong.     443 

were  not  content  with  a  war  against  grass  lands  and  enclosures, 
but  proposed  to  remedy  all  the  wrongs  from  which  the  tenants 
suffered.  .  .  . 

"While  the  peasantry  of  the  south  were  despairingly  appealing  to 
the  law  of  force,  the  peasantry  of  the  north  and  the  working  classes 
in  the  manufacturing  towns  had  resorted  to  the  same  expedient. 
The  public  highways  in  Ireland  were  reparable  by  the  householders. 
Every  man  was  bound  to  give  six  days'  labor  in  the  year,  and  who- 
ever had  a  horse  was  bound  to  give  six  days'  labor  of  the  horse  as  well. 
There  had  long  been  complaint  that  the  poor  only  had  been  com- 
pelled to  work,  and  that  the  rich  were  exempted  from  giving  pay- 
ment in  place  of  manual  labor.  Not  only  was  the  work  enforced 
upon  the  highways,  but  also  upon  private  roads,  while  the  grand 
juries  exacted  the  cess  from  the  farmers  only.  In  1763  a  general 
refusal  to  work  was  followed  by  a  rising  and  a  demand  for  a  redress 
of  all  grievances  against  waywardens,  tithe-proctors,  and  landlords. 
Green  boughs  of  oak  were  worn  in  the  hats  of  the  rioters,  who  went 
by  the  name  of  '  Oakboys.'  "  * 

And  now  what  is  this  Island  which  misrule  has  brought  to  such  a 
pass? 

Let  us  pause  and  examine  its  resources;  and  then  see  what  the 
New  Interest  and  the  English  Government  have  made  of  it  ? 

*  "  The  Kingdom  of  Ireland." 


m. 

What  they  have  done  with  the  Land,  its  Geographical 
Advantages,  Mineral  Wealth,  and  Industries. 

1.  Ireland  as  Nature  made  it  and  as  Man  has  ill-used  it. 

npHE  magnificent  position  given  to  Ireland  by  bountiful  nature, 
has  been  adverted  to,  rather  than  dwelt  on,  in  the  first  part  of 
this  book.  We  return  to  it  at  present.  It  is  most  important  that 
Irishmen  should  themselves  perfectly  understand  what  a  part  their 
native  island  will  be  called  upon  to  play  in  the  near  future,  when  the 
necessities  of  inter-continental  trade  will  make  Ireland  the  great 
point  of  arrival  and  departure  for  the  merchant  fleets  of  Europe  and 
America.  Indeed,  the  whole  commerce  of  the  Pacific, — when  the 
great  ship-canals  of  Panama,  Nicaragua,  and  Tehuantepec  are 
opened, — will  have  its  terminus  at  Queenstown  or  Gal  way,  or  at  both. 

In  the  pre-Christian  period,  there  was  a  walled  highway  extend- 
ing from  Galway  to  Eblana,  the  Dublin  or  Kingstown  of  to-day  (let 
us  consider  Dublin  and  Kingstown  as  one  for  commercial  purposes). 
Are  they  not  talking  just  now  of  opening  a  great  ship-canal  across 
the  island  between  these  two  ports,  and  following  mostly,  it  may  be, 
the  line  of  road  frequented  more  than  2,000  years  ago  by  the 
Phenician  and  Gaelic  traders? 

But  we  only  point  here  to  the  glorious  possibilities  of  the  future — 

possibilities  which  it  will  depend  on  Irish  genius  to  transform  into 

realities.     We  have  to  consider  what  advantages  God  has  bestowed  on 

Erin,   both   for   home-industry  and   external   trade; — to  show  how 

(444) 


The  Soil  Ravaged.  445 

mucli  nature  lias  done  for  Ireland,  and  how  much  man  has  done  to 
thwart  and  mar  God's  evident  designs. 

We  quote  reluctantly  again  from  Edmund  Spenser;  but  Ave  quote 
for  a  purpose.  "Sure/'  he  says,  "it  is  a  most  beautiful  and  sweet 
country  as  any  is  under  heaven,  being  stored  throughout  with  many 
goodly  rivers,  replenished  with  all  sorts  of  fish  most  abundantly; 
sprinkled  with  many  very  sweet  islands  and  goodly  lakes  like  little 
inland  seas,  that  will  carry  even  ships  upon  their  waters;  adorned 
with  goodly  woods  even  fit  for  building  of  houses  and  ships,  so  com- 
modiously,  as  that  if  some  princes  in  the  world  had  them,  they  would 
soon  hope  to  be  lords  of  all  the  seas,  and  ere  long  of  all  the  world; 
also  full  of  very  good  ports  and  havens  opening  upon  England,  as 
inviting  us  to  come  to  them,  to  see  what  excellent  commodities  tliat 
country  can  afford;  besides  the  soil  itself  most  fertile,  fit  to  yield  all 
kinds  of  fruit  that  shall  be  committed  thereunto.  And  lastly  the 
heavens  most  mild  and  temperate,  though  somewhat  more  moist  in 
tlie  parts  toward  the  west. "  * 

Since  Spenser  wrote  the  blind  rage  of  English  greed  or  English 
Vandalism  has  destroyed  the  forests  he  loved  and  praised  so  much, 
and  of  which  he  had  such  wealth  around  Kilcolman  and  down  the 
Blackwater  to  Youghal  and  Ardmore.  We  have  seen  what  a  profi- 
table traffic  Walter  Raleigh  made  of  the  timber  in  his  time,  and  what 
good  use  the  Earl  of  Cork  and  the  East  India  merchants  knew  how 
to  make  of  the  stately  Avoods  growing  down  to  the  very  beach  all 
through  Munster.  The  surface  and  the  soil  of  Ireland,  during  the 
last  three  hundred  years,  have  suffered  incalculable  damage  from  the 
ravages  and  neglect  of  man. 

The  soil  is  still  capable,  with  the  intelligent  and  loving  hus- 
bandry of  its  sons,  of  bearing  the  richest  harvest,  the  most  remunera- 
tive crops,  as  well  as  the  abundant  herds  and  flocks  of  other  days. 
For  the  natural  fertility  of  the  island  is,  if  carefully  liusbanded, 
inexhaustible. 

*  "View  of  Ir.eland,"  p.  28. 


446  The  Cause  of  Irelmid. 

Arthur  Young,  and  Count  Murpliy,  both  quoted  at  length  in  the 
early  chapters  of  this  work,  demonstrate  beyond  the  possibility  of 
doubt  the  truth  of  this  assertion.  The  former  affirms,  after  a  thor- 
ough survey  and  study  of  the  entire  island,  that  "natural  fertility, 
acre  for  acre,  over  the  two  Kingdoms,  is  certainly  in  favor  of  Ireland. 
Of  this,"  he  continues,  "I  believe  there  can  scarcely  be  a  doubt 
entertained,  when  it  is  considered  that  some  of  the  more  beautiful, 
and  even  best  cultivated  countries  in  England,  owe  almost  everything 
to  the  capital,  art,  and  industry  of  the  inhabitants."  He  had  said  a 
little  before:  "To  judge  of  Ireland  by  the  conversation  one  sometimes 
hears  in  England,  it  would  be  supposed  that  one-half  of  it  was  cov- 
ered with  bogs,  and  the  other  with  mountains  filled  with  Irish,  ready 
to  fly  at  the  sight  of  a  civilized  being.  There  are  people  who  will 
smile  when  they  hear,  that  in  proportion  to  the  size  of  the  two  coun- 
tries, Ireland  is  more  cultivated  than  England,  having  much  less 
waste  land  of  all  sorts."'  * 

Elsewhere,^  he  remarks:  "You  must  examine  into  the  Irish  soil 
before  you  can  believe,  that  a  country  which  has  so  beggarly  an 
appearance,  can  be  so  rich  and  fertile."  f 

It  would  seem  incredible  to  one  who  hears  so  much  about  the 
chronic  distress  of  the  agricultural  population  of  Ireland,  and  the 
periodical  appeals  for  help  in  favor  of  her  starving  millions,  that  she 
lias,  in  proportion  to  her  extent,  more  cultivated  lands  than  France. 
Mr.  Young  distributes  the  soil  of  the  latter  country  into  131,000,000 
of  acres,  of  which  84,000,000  are  under  cultivation,  and  47,000,000 
occupied  by  woods  and  wastes, — the  latter  making  more  than  one- 
third  of  the  entire  surface  of  the  country.  In  Ireland,  on  the  con- 
trary, the  uncultivated  portions  make  up  much  less  than  one-third. 
Besides,  whereas  in  France  and  even  in  England,  Scotland,  and 
Wales,  the  greater  part  of  the  waste  land  is  unreclaimable,  the  un- 
cultivated lands  of  Ireland  are  easily  reclaimable. 

And  yet, — more  than  a  century  after  Mr.  Young,  in  spite  of  the 

*  "  Toixv  in  Ireland,"  ii.,  part  ii.,  p.  3.  t  Ibidem,  p.  147. 


Even  the  Irish  Mountains  not  barren.  447 

natural  advantages  pointed  out  by  this  enlightened  English  traveler, 
in  spite,  indeed,  of  the  protestation  of  English  statesmen  and  Irish 
patriots,  the  proportion  of  cultivated  lands  in  Ireland  is  yearly  on  the 
decrease  !     But  we  must  not  anticipate. 

Even  the  Irish  mountains  are  not  stricken  with  barrenness. 
Newenham,  who  published  his  "View  of  Ireland  "  in  1809,  says  of 
them:  "In  most  of  the  mountainous  districts  of  Ireland,  5,000  acres 
will  be  found  to  yield  more  and  better  food  for  cattle  than  100,000  in 
many  parts  of  Scotland  and  Wales.  The  Irish  mountains  are  entirely 
different  from  those  of  the  countries  just  mentioned.  Herbage  of 
some  sort  or  other  grows  on  the  very  summits  of  some  of  the  loftiest 
in  Ireland;  but  in  Scotland,  and  for  the  most  part  in  Wales,  cattle 
stray  from  their  pasture  as  they  ascend  the  mountain's  brow.  The 
peculiar  tendency  of  the  Irish  soil  to  grass  is  such,  that  the  moun- 
tainous land  yields  good  sustenance  to  prodigious  droves  of  young 
cattle.  .  .  .  The  mountains  of  Ireland  are  the  principal  nurseries  for 
those  immense  herds  of  bullocks  and  cows  which  are  fattened  or  fed 
on  the  luxuriant  lowlands;  and  almost  the  only  nurseries  for  those 
which  are  annually  exported  to  England,  and  of  which  the  number 
in  four  years,  ending  5th  .Januar}',  1804,  amounted  to  106,578,  worth 
according  to  the  prices  current  in  that  year,  £1,044,404."* 

Unhappily,  as  the  nineteenth  century  continued  its  course,  the 
cattle  industry,  instead  of  progressing,  fell  away;  and  at  the  present 
moment,  on  account  of  the  cattle  and  meat  ti*ade  with  the  United 
States,  New  Zealand,  and  Australia,  it  is  very  seriously  threatened. 

But  we  ai'e  now  talking  of  the  soil  and  its  luxuriant  vegetation. 
"If  as  much  rain  fell  upon  the  clays  of  England  (a  soil  very  rarely 
met  with  in  Ireland,  and  never  without  much  stone)  as  falls  upon  the 
rocks  of  her  sister-island,  those  lands  could  not  be  cultivated.  But 
the  rocks  here  are  clothed  with  verdure.  Those  of  limestone,  with 
only  a  thin  covering  of  mould,  have  the  softest  and  most  beautiful 
turf  imaginable."     So  writes  Arthur  Young.     This  natural  fertility 

*  "View  of  tlie  Natural,  Political,  and  Commercial  Circumstances  of  Ireland," 
4to.  London,  1S09;— pp.  66,  67. 


448  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

is  supplemented,  and  can  be  perpetually  renewed  or  increased,  by 
the  extraordinary  abundance  of  the  very  best  natural  manures,  ready 
to  hand,  all  over  the  island.  This  great  abundance  is  entirely  inde- 
pendent of  the  presence  of  cattle.  According  to  Mr.  Young,  on  the 
coast  of  Mayo,  where  sea  and  other  manures  are  within  reach  of  all, 
"the  common  people  let  their  dung-hills  accumulate  till  they  become 
such  a  nuisance  that  they  remove  their  cabins  to  get  rid  of  them." 
Limestone,  except  in  Wexford,  Wicklow,  Tyrone,  and  Antrim, 
abounds  everywhere;  so  does  limestone  gravel,  the  best  of  all  mineral 
manures.  White,  grey,  and  blue  marls  are  also  plentiful  all  over  the 
surface  of  the  island.  The  sea-coast  provides  a  near  and  ready  sup- 
ply of  coral-sand,  or  shelly  sand  which  is  little  inferior  to  it.  Then 
there  are  the  sea-weeds,  and  the  sea  ooze. 

The  climate  of  Ireland  contributes  not  a  little  to  the  fertility  of 
the  soil,  though  its  excessive  humidity  has  more  than  one  serious 
drawback.  In  the  twelfth  century  Giraldus  Cambrensis  thought  it 
the  mildest  of  all  known  climates  {Terra  terrarum  temjwatissima). 

The  Climate. 

"A  very  great  proportion,"  says  Newenham,  "of  the  fat  cattle 
sent  to  Waterford,  Limerick,  and  Coi'k,  are  never  housed.  The 
cattle  slaughtered  in  the  market  of  Cork,  in  the  months  of  February 
and  March,  with  the  exception  of  those  fattened  at  the  distilleries, 
are,  eight  out  of  ten,  fattened  wholly  on  grass.  The  dairy  cows  in 
the  province  of  Munster  are  never,  through  downright  necessity, 
housed.  In  a  part  of  the  county  of  Kerry  the  people  often  leave 
their  potatoes  in  the  beds  without  additional  covering  during  the 
winter;  and  they  have  been  known  to  obtain  two  crops  of  corn  from 
the  same  land  within  the  year."  * 

Elsewhere  he  says:  "Its  general  mildness,  indeed,  is  such,  that, 

except  in  the  northern  counties,  the  rich  pastures  or  those  which 

have  been  fairly  treated,  exhibit  in  the  midst  of  winter  the  most 

beautiful  verdure  imaginable,  affording  sustenance  to  cattle  through- 

»  "  View  of  Ireland,"  p,  41. 


Disadvantages.  449 

out  the  year.'*'  The  ancient  Celts,  therefore,  profited  well  by  both 
soil  and  climate. 

The  disadvantages  of  the  moist  climate  of  Ireland  are,  that  it 
makes  the  season  for  ripening  grain  of  every  kind,  wheat  in  par- 
ticular, a  thing  of  great  uncertainty.  Hence,  while  American  grain 
is  so  abundant  and  so  cheap,  Irish  farmers  are  unwilling  to  risk  rais- 
ing cereal  crops.  The  summer  of  1884,  as  well  as  its  fine  weather 
lasting  through  August  and  September,  is  an  exception  to  the  gen- 
eral prevalence  of  wet  years;  1860,  'Gl,  and  '62  were,  as  Irish  farmers 
have  not  forgotten,  years  fatal  to  all  grain  crops. 

It  is,  on  the  whole,  a  singularly  mild  climate,  especially  in  the 
southern  counties.  Its  effect  both  on  vegetable  and  animal  life  is 
most  favorable.  Its  green  vesture  lasts  the  whole  year,  through  mid- 
winter as  through  the  Dog-Days.  Along  the  sunny  shores  of  the 
county  of  Cork  the  fuchsia  and  myrtle  grow  and  thrive  in  the  open. 
AVhen,  in  the  latitude  of  New  York,  Philadelphia,  and  Washington, 
the  snows  of  winter  wrap  the  earth  in  a  thick  shroud,  the  fields  and 
mountains  of  Ireland  still  afford  green  pastures  to  flocks  and  herds; 
while  the  grass  in  our  fields  is  burned  to  the  root  by  our  tropical 
summer  sun,  and  the  foliage  on  our  trees  is  shriveled  up  or  shed  on 
the  parched  earth,  woods  and  wolds  in  Ireland  are  covered  with  a 
vegetation  as  fresh  and  luxuriant  as  that  of  our  early  June. 

This  climate  with  all  its  moisture  is  as  favorable  to  animal  as  it  is 
to  vegetable  life.  Hard  as  has  been  the  lot  of  the  Irish  peasantry,  of 
the  great  mass  of  the  laboring  classes,  generation  after  generation, 
when  systematically  deprived,  under  Elizabeth,  and  James,  and 
Cromwell,  of  the  necessaries  of  life  in  the  midst  of  their  devastated 
fields,  or  when  afterwards  reduced  to  depend  for  subsistence  on  a  sin- 
gle vegetable, — they  have  shown  themselves,  physically,  a  hardy, 
robust,  and  active  race.  During  the  stay  of  the  Papal  Legate,  Ri- 
nuccini,  both  he,  and  the  Italians  in  his  suite,  were  in  admiration  of 
the  bodily  strength  and  powers  of  endurance  displayed  by  the  native 
Irish.  The  Irishman,  in  his  own  native  land,  is  not  subject  to  the 
extreme  heat  which  weakens  and  wastes  the  frame  during  the  months 
29 


450  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

when  the  thermometer  ranges  in  the  Nineties,  nor  to  the  excessive 
cold  which  dwarfs  and  stunts'  the  frame,  especially  where  extreme 
poverty  forbids  the  nse  of  a  comfortable  habitation,  comfortable 
clothing,  or  nutritious  food. 

Had  the  popular  classes  in  Ireland  the  means  of  living  like  our 
country-folk  in  the  United  States, — wholesome  and  abundant  diet, 
warm  clothing,  and  homes  befitting,  not  savages,  but  civilized  human 
beings,  would  make  of  them,  in  their  mild,  moist  climate,  the  hand- 
somest and  most  robust  race  in  Europe,  or  in  the  world. 

Mineral  Wealth. 

Coming  to  the  mineral  wealth  of  Ireland,  and  quoting,  not  from 
the  scientific  works  of  living  writers,  but  from  those  of  men  who  sur- 
veyed Ireland  a  century  ago,  and  laid  the  results  of  their  studies 
before  the  eyes  of  Parliament  and  the  Government,  we  shall  thereby 
make  it  clear  that  the  mineral  resources  of  the  countrv,  like  all  its 
other  natural  advantages,  have  been  wilfully  and  shamefully  neg- 
lected, while  all  Europe  and  America  were  progressing  rapidly. 

"There  is,"  says  Newenham,  "not  a  county  in  Ireland  which  does 
not  contain  some  valuable  mineral  or  fossil;  several  of  them,  it  is  now 
ascertained,  abound  Avith  ti'easures  of  this  sort;  and  these,  for  the 
greater  part,  are  most  happily  situated  for  the  exportation  of  their 
products,  either  in  a  rude  or  manufactured  state."  * 

It  is  a  very  common  prejudice  that  Ireland  contains  little,  if  any, 
of  really  available  mineral  riches.  Her  coal  mines,  we  admit,  are  of 
trifling  account  as  compared  with  those  of  the  neighboring  island. 
But  nature  has  been  so  bountiful  as  to  compensate  amply  for  the 
absence  of  coal.  Taking  the  counties  in  alphabetical  order,  we  find 
from  the  works  of  Dr.  Smith,  and  of  Mr.  Donald  Stewart  minerals 
distributed  as  follows  all  over  the  island: 

In  Armagh,  lead,  ochres  of  different  colors,  and  vari- 
ous beautiful  marbles. 

"  View  of  IreLand,"  p.  45. 


Distribution  per  Counties.  451 

In  Antrim,  coal  and  gypsum  in  abundance,  beautiful 
crystals,  pebbles,  and  different  sorts  of  ochres. 

In  Carlow,  granite,  talc,  marbles,  crystals,  and  ochres. 

In  Cavan,  fine  lead  ore,  iron,  coal,  ochres,  clay,  fuller's 
earth,  sulphur,  copper,  silver,  and  jasper. 

In  Clare,  lead,  iron,  copper,  coal,  and  beautiful  spars 
like  those  of  Derbyshire. 

In  Cork,  lead,  iron,  copper,  coal,  fine  slate,  extremely 
beautiful  marbles  of  a  great  variety  of  colors,  petrifactions, 
brown  and  yellow  ochres,  excellent  potter's  clay,  and 
amethysts  of  great  beauty. 

In  Donegal,  rich  lead  ore,  immense  quantities  of  dif- 
ferent sorts  of  clays,  coal,  siliceous  sand,  manganese,  iron, 
beautiful  granite,  chalcedony,  marble  very  like  statuary 
marble,  and  granites. 

In  Down,  iron,  fuller's  earth,  soap-stone,  rich  lead, 
marbles  of  different  sorts,  crystals,  granite,  copper,  and 
very  fine  slate. 

In  Dublin,  copper,  lead,  ochres  of  different  colors,  pot- 
ter's clay,  beautiful  pebbles,  crystals,  and  porphyry. 

In  Fermanagh,  rich  iron  ore  and  coal. 

In  Galway,  rich  lead,  crystals,  pearls,  and  marbles  of 
superior  beauty. 

In  Kerry,  abundance  of  rich  copper,  lead,  beautifully 
variegated  marbles,  cobalt,  crystals,  pearls,  and  amethysts. 

In  Kildare,  marbles  of  different  colors,  and  bearing  a 
higher  polish  than  Italian  marble. 

In  Kilkenny,  iron,  coal,  ochres,  pipe  and  potter's  clay, 
marbles  of  remarkable  beauty,  granite,  and  jasper. 

In  King's  County,  a  silver  mine  near  Edenderry. 

In  Limerick,  iron,  copper,  lead,  coal,  and  fine  slate. 

In  Londonderry,    iron,    copper,    lead,    abundance   of 


452  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

crystals,  beautiful  pebbles  and  petrifactions  near  Lough 
Neagh,  granite,  and  marbles. 

In  Leitrim,  inexhaustible  stores  of  iron  and  coal,  cop- 
per, blue,  green,  yellow,  pale  red,  and  crimson-colored 
clays,  fuller's  earth,  and  granites. 

In  Longford,  a  great  variety  of  marbles,  ochres,  lead, 
fine  slate,  extremely  rich  iron  ore,  and  jasper. 

In  Louth,  ochres  and  fuller's  earth. 

In  Mayo,  abundance  of  iron  ore,  ochres,  granite,  coal, 
slate  of  a  superior  quality,  beautiful  black  marble  without 
a  speck,  and  manganese. 

In  Meath,  ochres,  rich  and  abundant  copper  ore. 

In  Monaghan,  iron,  lead,  manganese,  coal,  marble,  full- 
er's earth,  and  antimony. 

In  Queen's  County,  iron,  coal,  copper,  marble,  ochres, 
fuller's  earth,  and  potter's  clay. 

In  Roscommon,  ochres,  coal,  iron,  and  marble  contain- 
ing petrified  skeletons  of  various  animals,  and  susceptible 
of  a  very  high  polish. 

In  Sligo,  iron,  copper,  lead,  coal,  fine  clays,  talc,  silver, 
and  in  abundance  near  the  coast  a  stone  bearing  a  high 
polish,  which  is  called  serpent-stone,  from  its  presenting 
figures  resembling  the  skeletons  of  this  reptile. 

In  Tipperary,  rich  and  numerous  copper  and  lead 
mines,  coal,  silver,  plenty  of  fine  slate,  clays,  and  the  most 
beautiful  marbles. 

In  Tyrone,  iron  and  plenty  of  good  potter's  clay. 

In  Waterford,  copper  in  abundance,  iron,  ochres,  hand- 
some pebbles,  and  — near  the  harbor— a  most  beautiful 
green  and  black  marble. 

In  Westmeath,  copper,  lead,  coal,  and  handsome  yel- 
low and  dove-colored  marbles. 


Mismanagement  and  Jobbery.  453 

In  Wexford,  lead,  copper,  iron,  marbles,  ochres,  and  a 
blue  earth. 

In  Wicklow,  crystals,  sulphur,  manganese,  copper  in 
abundance,  granite,  lead,  tin,  and  several  other  metallic 
substances,  including  gold. 


To  this  summary  we  must  add  the  opinions  of  two  English  miners 
on  the  famous  Arigna  iron-mines:  Mr.  Lawson,  in  evidence  before 
the  Irish  House  of  Commons,  stated,  that  the  iron-stone  at  Arigna 
lay  in  beds  of  from  three  to  twelve  fathoms  deep;  and  that  it  could 
be  raised  for  two  shillings  and  sixpence  the  ton  .  .  .  .  ;  that  the  coal 
in  the  neighborhood  was  better  than  any  in  England;  and  that  it 
extended  six  miles  in  length,  and  five  in  breadth.  He  also  stated 
that  fire-brick  clay  and  free-stone  of  the  best  qualities  were  in  the 
neighborhood,  and  that  a  bed  of  jjotter's  clay  extended  there  two 
miles  in  length  and  one  in  breadth.  Mr.  Clarke,  on  the  same  occa- 
sion, declared  that  the  iron  ore  was  inexhaustible.  And  our  distin- 
guished countryman,  Mr.  Kirwan,  .  .  .  affirmed  that  the  Arigna 
iron  was  better  than  any  iron  made  from  any  species  of  single  ore 
in  England. 

So  Newenham.  Since  then  several  attempts  have  been  made  to 
Avork  these  mines  to  advantage;  but,  in  the  last  instance,  at  least,  the 
direction  of  the  works  or  the  works  themselves  fell  into  the  hands  of 
"jobbers,"  who  made  the  name  of  the  mine  notorious.  The  latest 
report  is  that  of  Mr.  Twigg,  who  reports  to  the  Directors  of  the 
Arigna  Company:  "A  greater  variety  of  ironstones  I  have  never  met 
with,  from  which,  by  a  proper  admixture  and  proper  management,  I 
have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  pig-iron  of  the  best  marks,  and  fit 
for  foundry  work  of  any  kind,  may  be  obtained.  .  .  .  We  can  get 
any  quantity  at  the  shortest  notice.  There  is  enough  to  last  two 
furnaces  for  two  hundred  and  fifty  years." 

Such  is  the  land  and  such  its  treasures.  We  have  given  this 
notice  of  the  Arigna  mine  only  to  show  how  little  the  Government, 


454  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

the  local  landlords,  and  Irish  capitalists  in  general  care  for  the  de- 
velopment of  these  great  resources. 

At  any  rate,  it  is  evident,  that  Ireland  contains  within  her  own 
bosom  inexhaustible  treasures  which  have  never  yet  been  turned  to 
proper  account. 

Water  Communication, 

But,  in  connection  with  the  fertility  of  the  soil,  what  it  produces 
and  what  it  is  capable  of  yielding  to  skilful  husbandry,  and  with  the 
undeveloped  mineral  wealth  and  all  the  possibilities  of  industry  and 
commerce, — there  are  the  wonderful  facilities  for  communication  by 
water,  as  well  as  the  immense  water-power  ready  for  manufacturing 
purposes.  Ireland  in  this  respect  yields  to  no  country  on  the  face  of 
the  globe. 

The  coast-line  all  round  the  island  is  indented  with  harbors. 
"Taking  one  district  with  another,"  says  Newenham,  "there  is  a  har- 
bor or  safe  anchoring  place  to  about  every  150  square  miles,  or  every 
96,000  acres.  .  •.  .  There  are  not,"  he  says  elsewhere,  "twenty  har- 
bors in  England  and  Wales  which  can  be  classed  with  forty  of  the 
best  in  Ireland;  nor,  with  perhaps  the  single  exception  of  Milford, 
which  is  about  seven  miles  long  and  one  broad,  with  from  four  to 
thirteen  fathoms  on  a  bottom  of  mud,  is  there  one  in  the  former 
which  can,  in  almost  any  respect,  be  compared  with  the  best  ten  in 
the  latter.  And  if  the  safe  anchoring  places  be  added  to  the  harbors 
of  each  country,  Ireland  will  rank  above  England  not  only  in  ca- 
paciousness, safety,  and  proportionate  number  of  harbors,  but  like- 
wise in  the  general  number  of  places  for  the  accommodation  of  ship- 
ping, there  being  136  harbors  and  anchoring  places  belonging  to  the 
former;  and,  as  far  as  appears  by  the  charts  which  the  writer  has 
examined,  only  112  to  the  latter."  * 

Indeed  the  magnificent  estuaries  of  the  south  and  west  coasts  seem 
fitted  by  Providence  to  receive  the  fleets  of  both  hemispheres  in  the 
new  era  which  is  dawning  upon  Ireland  and  the  world. 


"  View  of  Ireland,"  pp.  8-43. 


Irish  Canals.  455 

Not  less  wonderful  is  tlie  network  of  rivers  and  lakes  by  which 
interior  intercourse  is  facilitated.  The  same  author  saw  and  pro- 
claimed this  at  tlie  beginning  of  the  century. 

"So  numerous  are  the  rivers  of  Ireland,  in  proportion  to  its  size, 
and  so  abundant  the  supply  of  water,  that  we  may  safely  say,  almost 
every  parish  might  enjoy  the  benefits  of  internal  navigation,  at  an 
expense,  which,  one  place  with  another,  many  a  company  of  British 
undertakers  would  disregard,  and  that  very  few  parts  of  Ireland,  com- 
paratively speaking,  would  be  found  ineligible  for  the  establishment 
of  manufactures  through  a  deficiency  of  water,  or  the  want  of  water- 
carriage.  Of  248  mills  for  grinding  corn  erected  in  Ireland  between 
the  years  1758  and  1790,  every  one,  as  far  as  the  writer  can  learn,  is 
turned  by  water.  Windmills  are  in  no  country  less  common,  or  less 
necessary,  than  in  this.''* 

During  the  brief  period  of  self-government  enjoyed  by  the  coun- 
try in  the  last  century,  it  was  proposed  to  construct  a  system  of  ca- 
nals connecting  the  great  watercourses  with  each  other  and  with  the 
principal  ports.  An  accurate  survey  was  :nade.  "Thirty-two  rivers 
were  found  by  actual  survey  to  be  fit  and  capable  of  being  rendered 
navigable,  whereof  the  united  lengths,  in  addition  to  that  of  the 
Shannon,  and  those  of  the  projected  canals,  exceed  1,000  miles.  Had 
the  proposed  works,  tlierefore,  been  carried  into  effect,  10,000  square 
miles,  or  6,400,000  acres,  would,  at  furthest,  have  been  within  five 
miles  of  navigable  river  or  canal.  And  if  to  this  be  added  the  sinu- 
ous line  of  the  Irish  coast,  comprising  1,737  miles,  it  will  be  seen  that 
18,685  square  miles,  or  11,958,400  acres,  which  constitute  almost 
two-thirds  of  the  area  of  Ireland,  would  have  lain  within  five  miles  of 
sea,  river,  or  canal;  and  three  millions  of  money,  faitlifully  and  skil- 
fully expended,  would  probably  be  more  than  sufficient  for  the 
purpose. 

"The  maritime  counties  comprise  two-thirds  of  the  land  of 
Ireland.     Each  of  them  has  from  two  to  twelve  of  the  rivers  in  pro- 

*  "  View  of  Ireland,"  p.  25. 


456  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

portion  to  the  extent  of  the  sea-coast;  nor,  with  the  exception  of 
Wicklow,  is  there  one  of  them  which  has  not  the  advantage  of  one 
or  more  rivers,  either  actually  navigable  to  a  very  considerable  dis- 
tance from  the  sea,  or  capable  of  being  rendered  so  at  a  moderate 
expense."* 

In  this  system  of  internal  navigation,  for  all  the  purposes  of  trade, 
pleasure,  and  neighborly  intercourse,  the  numerous  large  and  beauti- 
ful lakes  of  Ireland  must  be  counted  as  a  most  important  element. 
A  glance  at  the  map  of  Ireland  will  show  liow  the  entire  network  of 
lakes  may  be  connected  with  the  Shannon,  the  main  artery  of  com- 
mercial life  and  activity  for  the  whole  island. 

The  Fisheries. 

We  have  said  nothing  of  the  Fisheries  of  Ireland,  which  ought  to 
be,  but  which  are  not,  a  mine  of  wealth  for  the  hardy  populations  of 
the  maritime  counties,  a  school  in  which  the  nation  might  train  an 
army  of  brave  seamen.  .  .  .  All,  all  have  been  neglected.  All,  in 
the  past,  has  been  a  blind  and  savage  and  stupid  sinning  against  the 
manifest  designs  of  Him  who  made  both  the  sea  and  the  land  for 
man's  activity. 

How  happens  it  that,  on  a  soil  so  fertile,  with  such  a  climate,  in 
such  a  magnificent  geographical  position  on  the  great  highway  of 
commerce  between  the  Old  AVorld  and  the  New,  and  all  through  this 
enlightened,  industrial,  and  freedom-loving  nineteenth  century, — 
Irishmen — the  entire  nation — have  been  stricken  with  poverty,  vis- 
ited every  decade  with  famine,  with  insufficient  crops  to  live  upon,  no 
industry,  no  manufactures,  no  trade,  no  commerce  ? 

It  is  a  fearful  question, — a  mystery  unfathomable  at  first  sight, 
but  easily  explained  in  the  light  of  history. 

"The  infatuation  of  England,"  says  Mr.  Walpole,  "in  respect  to 
the  economic  laws  by  which  Ireland  was  to  be  hindered  from  grow- 
ing wealthy,  was  the  more  extraordinary  inasmuch  as  the  mischief 

*  "  View  of  Ireland,"  p.  18. 


Gradual  destruction  of  Irish  Trade  by  England.  457 

was  inflicted  not  so  much  upon  the  beaten-down  native  population, 
as  upon  the  thriving  English  citizens  in  the  towns  and  seaports,  who 
were  intended  to  be  the  mainstay  of  the  English  ascendancy.  The 
English  commercial  world  had  always  been  absurdly  jealous  of  the 
least  prospect  of  Irish  prosperity.  Strafford  had  done  his  best  to 
ruin  the  rising  woollen  manufacture  in  order  to  protect  English 
clothiers.  Cromwell  had  indeed  conferred  the  same  commercial 
privileges  on  Ireland  as  were  enjoyed  by  England;  but  in  1663  the 
English  landed  interest  became  alarmed  lest  the  rents  of  their 
grazing  land  should  fall  by  reason  of  the  imported  Irish  cattle 
diminishing  the  growth  of  English  beasts.  For  Ireland  was  always  a 
great  pasture  country,  and  cattle  her  chief  source  of  wealth.  A 
hasty  bill  was  passed  by  the  unreasoning  Royalist  Houses,  absolutely 
prohibiting  the  importation  of  Irish  cattle,  sheep,  swine,  salt  meat, 
or  bacon ;  and  declaring  such  importation  to  be  a  '  common  nuis- 
ance ';  and  so  violent  was  their  ignorant  ill  temper,  that  a  contribu- 
tion of  Irish  cattle  generously  offered  by  the  Irish  gentry  for  the 
relief  of  the  citizens  of  London  who  had  been  ruined  by  the  great 
fire  was  ungraciously  denounced  as  an  attempt  to  undersell  the 
English  growers. 

"In  the  year  1663  Ireland  was  carefully  omitted  from  the  'Act 
for  the  encouragement  of  trade,'  which  amended  the  Navigation  Act 
of  1660,  the  coiisequence  of  which  was  that  all  the  carrying  trade  in 
Irish-built  ships  with  any  part  of  his  Majesty's  domains  was  for- 
bidden, under  the  penalty  of  foi-feiture  of  ship  and  cargo.  And  in 
1696  all  direct  import  trade  with  the  British  Colonies  was  absolutely 
prohibited,  and  all  colonial  produce  was  first  obliged  to  pass  through, 
and  pay  duty  in,  England. 

"Xow  that  on  the  return  of  peace  to  the  distracted  island,  trade 
had  rapidly  revived,  and  the  Irish,  unable,  by  reason  of  the  English 
laws,  to  make  profit  out  of  the  growing  of  cattle,  had  turned  their 
pastures  into  sheep-walks,  it  was  found  that  the  woollen  manufactures 
were  showing  signs  of  increased  vitality,  and  the  English  traders  fell 
into  a  selfish  panic,  lest  Irish  competition  should  reduce  their  gains, 


458  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

and  clamored  for  legislative  protection.  The  ruin  of  the  Irish 
woollen  trade,  almost  wholly,  be  it  remembered,  in  the  hands  of  the 
English  colony,  was  decreed,  and  remorselessly  effected.  The  servile 
Irish  legislature  was  compelled  to  pass  an  act  (10  William  III.,  c.  5) 
'  in  grateful  acknowledgment  of  his  majesty's  royal  care,  favor,  and 
protection,'  putting  a  prohibitive  export  duty  on  all  broadcloths,  ker- 
seys, serges,  and  flannels;  while  the  English  Parliament  passed  an 
Act  prohibiting  the  export  of  either  Irish  wool  or  woollen  goods  to 
any  port  in  the  world  except  to  Milford,  Chester,  Liverpool,  and  cer- 
tain ports  in  the  British  Channel,  under  a  penalty  of  £500,  and  the 
forfeiture  of  both  ship  and  cargo;  and  forbad  its  shipment  from  any 
Irish  port  except  Cork,  Drogheda,  Dublin,  Kinsale,  Waterford,  and 
Youghal. 

"English  and  Irish  wool  was  the  best  in  the  world.  England  was 
by  English  law  the  only  market  for  Irish  wool,  and  she  could  take  it 
at  her  own  price,  otherwise  Ireland  had  no  purchaser.  The  English 
manufacturer,  therefore,  had  a  monopoly  of  the  best  wool  at  a  low 
price.  But  what  put  mone}^  into  the  pockets  of  the  English  traders 
was  the  ruin  of  the  Irish  manufacturer  and  the  Irish  grower;  and 
the  hands  who  had  been  employed  in  the  manufacture  of  woollen 
stuffs  were  thrown  out  of  employment,  and  streamed  away  to  America 
and  the  Continent  never  to  return."  * 

"The  object  of  that  species  of  policy  which  the  British  Govern- 
ment had  exercised  toward  Ireland  (said  Mr.  Pitt  in  his  speech  on 
the  commercial  propositions  in  the  year  1785)  had  been  to  debar  her 
from  the  enjoyment  and  use  of  her  own  resources,  and  to  make  her 
completely  subservient  to  the  interest  and  opulence  of  Britain." 

Mr.  Newenham  is  more  emphatic  still  in  his  condemnation  of  such 
an  unqualifiable  policy.  "In  reviewing,"  he  says,  "the  different  acts 
of  the  parliaments  of  Britain  and  Ireland,  which  affected  the  trade  of 
the  latter,  it  will  be  found  that  the  trade  of  a  distinct  kingdom,  the 
trade  of  an  essential  part  of  the  British  Empire,  was  unsuitably,  un- 

*  "  The  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  pp.  352-354. 


English  Monopoly  an  Incuhus  on  Ireland.  459 

justly,  unwisely,  and  oppressively  limited  like  that  of  a  colony;  that 
the  prosperity  of  Ireland  was  always  sacrificed  to  that  of  Britain; 
that,  with  the  exception  of  the  linen,  every  valuable  manufacture  es- 
tablished in  Ireland,  or  of  the  establishment  or  even  introduction 
whereof  there  was  any  prospect,  and  which  was  likely  to  become  in 
any  degree  a  competitor,  either  in  the  home  or  foreign  market,  with 
a  similar  one  undertaken  in  Britain,  however  insignificant,  was  in- 
dustriously depressed;  that  the  Irish  were  invariably  obliged  to  give 
the  preference  to  the  produce  of  British  industry;  that,  with  the 
foregoing  exception,  no  manufacture  of  Ireland  was  fairly  received  by 
Britain;  that  downright  necessity  alone  occasioned  the  admission  of 
even  the  rude  produce  of  the  former  into  the  latter;  that  the  acts  of 
the  Irish  parliament  which  affected  to  aim  at  internal  improvements, 
calculated  to  enlarge  the  trade  of  the  country,  or  which  purported  to 
be  for  the  advancement  of  any  lucrative  species  of  enterprise,  were, 
for  the  most  part,  merely  illusive."* 

"The  monopolizing  spirit  of  England  has  sate  like  an  incubus  over 
the  sister  island,  blasted  all  its  blessings,  and  entailed  on  it  un- 
utterable woes.  Whenever  the  interests  of  the  whole  Irish  nation 
came  into  collision  even  with  those  of  a  single  city,  town,  or  cor- 
poration in  England,  they  were  offered  uj)  a  sacrifice  on  the  altars  of 
avarice  and  cupidity  without  remorse  and  without  control.  In  every 
case,  of  course,  when  the  great  national  interests  on  both  sides  in- 
terfered, those  of  the  Irish  were  unfeelingly  devoted  to  destruction. 

"Throughout  the  whole  connection  there  has  scarcely  been  one 
measure  adopted  on  the  part  of  England  towards  Ireland,  that  wears 
the  semblance  of  a  magnanimous  policy,  except  when  forced  from  her 
fears  during  the  American  Ee volution."  f 

Should  any  one  deem  these  judgments  pronounced  on  the  utterly 
selfish  policy  of  England  either  too  severe,  or  not  sufficiently  justified 
by  historical  evidence,  we  should  advise  him  to  consult  the  pub- 
lications of  the   State   Paper   Office.     In   a   preceding   chapter   we 

*  "  View  of  Ireland,"  p.  97.  +  Vindicke  Hibemicoe,  p.  496. 


460  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

blamed  the  Earl  of  Strafford  for  sacrificing  to  England  the  woollen 
industry  of  Ireland, — which  was  beginning  to  revive  and  prosper  after 
the  "confiscations"  and  "plantations"  of  James,  and  the  desolating 
wars  of  Elizabeth.     Here  are  his  own  words: 

"Wisdom  advises  to  keej?  this  kingdom  as  much  subordinate  and 
dependent  upon  England  as  is  possible,  and  holding  them  from  the 
manufacture  of  wool  (which,  unless  otherwise  directed,  I  shall  by  all 
means  discourage),  and  then  in  forcing  them  to  take  their  clothing 
from  thence  (England),  and  to  take  their  salt  from  the  King  (being 
that  which  preserves  and  gives  value  to  all  their  native  staple  com- 
modities), how  can  they  depart  from  us  without  nakedness  and 
beggary  ?  " 

Elsewhere  he  insists  upon  the  same  purpose:  "It  would  trench 
not  only  upon  the  clothings  of  England,  being  our  staple  commodity, 
so  as  if  they  should  manufacture  their  own  wools,  which  grew  to  very 
great  quantities,  we  should  not  only  lose  the  profit  we  make  now  by 
indraping  their  wools,  but  his  Majesty  lose  extremely  by  his  customs; 
and  in  conclusion  it  might  be  feared  they  would  beat  us  out  of  the 
trade  itself,  by  underselUng  us,  which  they  were  well  able  to  do."  * 

This  policy  of  selfishness  continued  to  govern  the  councils  of  Eng- 
land under  every  succeeding  regime  and  dynasty. 

We  have  seen  above  how,  under  William  III.,  the  woollen  in- 
dustries of  Ireland  were  ruthlessly  sacrificed  to  secure  an  English 
monopoly  in  that  business.  It  is  amusing  to  read,  at  this  distance  of 
time,  the  reasons  on  which  the  English  House  of  Lords  based  the  de- 
mand to  kill  Irish  manufactures.  On  June  9,  1698,  they  stated  in 
an  address  to  the  King:  "that  the  growing  manufacture  of  cloth  in 
Ireland,  both  by  the  cheapness  of  all  sorts  of  necessaries  of  life,  and 
goodness  of  materials  for  making  all  manner  of  cloth,  doth  invite  his 
subjects  of  England  with  their  families  and  servants  to  leave  their 
habitations  to  settle  there,  to  the  increase  of  the  woollen  manufacture 
in  Ireland,  which  makes  his  loyal  subjects  in  this  kingdom  very  ap- 

*  "State  Letters"  of  the  Earl  of  Strafford,  vol.  i.,  p.  193;  vol.  ii.,  p.  19. 


Irish  Manufacturers  and  tlie  British  Parliament.  461 

prehensive  that  the  further  growth  of  it  may  greatly  prejudice  the 
said  manufacture  here;  and  praying  that  his  Majesty  would  be  fur- 
ther pleased,  in  the  most  public  and  effectual  manner  that  may  be,  to 
declare  to  all  his  subjects  of  Ireland,  that  the  growth  and  increase  of 
the  tuoollen  mamfacture  there  hath  long,  and  will  ever,  be  looked  iqjon 
with  great  jealousy  hy  all  his  subjects  of  this  kingdom" 

The  Irish  manufacturers,  dismayed  but  not  entirely  discouraged 
by  such  legislation,  applied  themselves  to  improve  their  own  methods 
of  production,  and  turned  out  cloths  in  every  Avay  superior  to  any 
thing  that  came  from  English  or  French  looms.  Again  there  was  a 
storm  of  jealousy  and  indignation  in  England;  and  an  Act  was  passed 
forbidding  under  severe  penalties  the  exportation  to  Ireland  of 
fuller's  earth  and  scouring  clay !  Probably,  Irish  manufacturers 
had  not  then  discovered  the  great  abundance  of  fuller's  earth  with 
which  their  own  conntry  was  blessed,  and  had,  therefore,  to  depend 
on  England  for  their  supply  of  that  article.  How  wretchedly  narrow 
is  such  a  national  spirit ! 

Finding  themselves  thus  hopelessly  debarred  from  all  prospect  of 
success  in  the  woollen  industries,  the  Irish  began  to  manufacture 
silk,  and  were  rewarded  by  putting  on  the  market  an  excellent  article. 
But  England  grew  once  more  alarmed.  And  in  1T29,  that  then 
miserable  excrescence  on  the  body  politic,  the  Irish  Parliament,  the 
servile  tool  of  the  landlord  interest  in  both  countries,  passed  an  Act 
exempting  English  silks  from  all  import  duties  into  Ireland  ! 

At  the  time  of  passing  this  act,  "there  were,"  says  Newenham, 
"according  to  the  evidence  given  before  the  Irish  parliament  in  1784, 
800  silk  looms  at  work  in  Ireland,  Thirty-six  years  afterwards  there 
were  but  50;  and  thus  3,000  persons  were  driven  to  beggary  or  emi- 
gration," 

We  have  also  seen  above  that  by  an  Act  passed  in  1695  the  Irish 
were  interdicted  from  trading  directly  with  any  part  of  the  British 
colonies.  In  1730  anotlier  act  was  passed  permitting  the  Irish  to 
import  directly  from  the  English  Plantations  in  America,  all  goods 
produced    there,    "except    sugars,    tobacco,    indigo,    cotton,    wool. 


462  TTie  Cause  of  Ireland. 

molasses,  ginger,  pitch,  tar,  turpentine,  masts,  yards  and  bowsprits, 
speckled  wood,  Jamaica  wood,  fustick,  or  other  dyeing  woods,  rice, 
beaver  skins  or  other  furs,  or  copper  ore." 

It  will  be  seen  that  rum  was  the  only  West  Indian  production 
not  "excepted."  This  exception,  however,  was  cunningly  devised  to 
kill  in  Ireland  the  manufacture  of  spirits  of  all  kinds,  the  only 
industry  then  left  to  the  Irish. 

Simultaneovisly  with  the  distilling  of  spirits,  Ireland  carried  on 
the  manufacture  of  beer,  ale,  and  porter,  and  revived  that  of  glass, 
which,  as  our  readers  may  recollect,  had  been  recommended  by  the 
most  intelligent  among  Elizabeth's  Adventurers.  Again  there  was 
an  outcry  in  England  among  the  men  interested  in  these  industries, 
and  an  Act  was  sent  over  to  the  Irish  Parliament  in  1738,  decreeing 
"that  all  hops  landed  in  Great  Britain  or  Ireland,  except  British 
hops  in  the  latter,  should  be  burned,  and  the  ship  forfeited."  A 
duty  of  "threepence  per  pound,  over  and  above  all  other  duties, 
customs,  and  subsidies,"  was  imposed  on  hops  thus  landing  in  Ire- 
land from  Great  Britain.     Of  course  this  killed  the  Irish  breweries. 

In  1750,  they  killed,  by  a  similar  process,  the  manufacture  of 
glass.  The  importation  of  glass  into  Ireland  from  any  place  but 
Britain,  and  the  exportation  of  glass  from  Ireland  to  any  place  what- 
soever, were  prohibited  on  pain  of  forfeiture  of  ship  and  cargo,  and  a 
penalty  of.ten  shillings  for  every  pound  weight  of  glass  put  on  board, 
or  on  shore,  on  the  master,  and  on  every  person  aiding  and  assisting 
therein. 

This  manufacture  was  especially  flourishing  in  Cork,  where  very 
superior  and  beautiful  cut-glass  was  produced.  Indeed  this  industry 
promised  to  compensate  in  some  measure  for  the  extinction  of  the 
woollen  trade.  But  nothing  was  permitted  to  thrive  in  the  ill-fated 
island. 

We  have  barely  alluded  to  the  odious  part  played  by  the  Irish 
Parliament  in  all  these  discreditable  transactions.  It  must  be  con- 
stantly borne  in  mind  that  the  landlord  legislators  of  Ireland  were 
ever  basely  subservient  to  those  of  their  class  in  the  British  Legislature. 


Disastrous  Effects  on  Farmiiig  and  Population.  463 

But  we  have  not  depicted  the  deplorable  effects  of  all  this  re- 
strictive and  prohibitive  legislation  on  the  agricultural  interests  and 
population  of  Ireland. 

We  are  here  at  the  very  source  of  that  incredible  wretchedness, 
discontent,  agrarian  violence  at  home,  forced  emigration  to  foreign 
lands,  and  inextinguishable  hatred  of  England  cherished  by  the 
emigrants,  which  make  up  so  much  of  Irish  modern  history,  and  so 
much  as  well  of  England's  present  difficulties  and  danger. 

The  woollen  monopoly  in  England  overreached  itself.  The  de- 
mand was  far  below  the  supply;  and  the  only  market  was  the  home- 
market.  So,  in  1733  (7  George  II.),  an  Act  was  passed  to  "en- 
courage the  home  consumption  of  wool,*'  and  it  obliged  every  corpse 
to  be  buried  in  a  woollen  shroud,  under  a  penalty  of  £5,  to  be  re- 
covered from  the  executors. 

The  "growth"  of  wool  being  the  only  resource  left  to  Ireland,  and 
England  being  the  only  lawful  market  for  the  article, — two  things 
happened:  tlie  whole  country  was  turned  into  a  sheep-walk,  and  the 
entire  coast-line  became  the  resort  of  smugglers,  who  carried  the 
beautiful  Irish  wool  to  the  Continent  in  return  for  French  wines  and 
Flemish  wares.     A  large  trade  in  salt  meat  had  grown  up  also. 

Then  happened  what  has  been  happening  in  Ireland  during  the 
last  three  decades;  the  farmers,— the  tenants-at-will,  were  evicted  on 
a  large  scale,  and  were  replaced  by  graziers.  Where  twenty  or  thirty 
farmers  had  cultivated  an  estate,  with  their  large  force  of  farm- 
laborers,  one  or  two  herdsmen  or  shepherds  sufficed  to  do  the  pro- 
prietor's work.  So  the  tillers  of  the  soil  were  driven  to  beggary,  star- 
vation, or  to  emigration — when  they  could  afford  to  emigrate. 

Leases  were  only  given  on  condition  that  the  land  should  be  kept 
in  pasture,  and  thus  the  area  of  cultivable  soil  yearly  diminished;  and 
in  inverse  proportion  grew  distress,  beggary,  the  despair  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  crime.  In  1716  the  Irish  legislature  demanded  to  pass  a 
law  compelling  the  putting  into  cultivation  five  per  cent,  of  the  fal- 
low lands  thus  leased  out,  and  offering  a  small  bounty  on  the  export 
of  corn. 


464  The  Cause  of  Ireland, 

Would  it  be  believed  that  this  proposed  enactment  created  such 
alarm  in  England,  that  the  measure  was  nipped  in  the  bud!  The 
Irish  would  surely  undersell  the  English  corn-growers;  and  Ireland 
had,  of  late,  become  their  most  profitable  market. 

Then  came  (1725)  a  potato-blight  with  its  fearful  accompaniments 
of  starvation  and  fever,  thousands  of  the  poor  people  dying  of  hunger 
in  Ulster. 

In  1731  the  Legislators  of  England, — that  is  the  great  landlord 
interest  in  both  countries, — were  shamed  into  cancelling  the  clauses 
in  their  leases  forbidding  the  breaking  up  and  cultivation  of  the  soil, 
— of  only  a  very  small  portion,  however. 

It  was  a  small  homoeopathic  dose  to  remedy  a  gigantic  and  ever- 
growing evil, — the  absence  of  remunerative  labor  in  a  whole 
nation.     It  has  been  so  in  Ireland  for  centuries.     It  is  so  still. 

The  mass  of  the  people  were  deprived  of  all  right  to  the  soil  of 
their  native  country;  the  landlords  allowed  them  to  have  no  interest 
in  it,  to  accumulate  no  capital  out  of  it,  to  put  none  of  their  capital 
into  it.  There  was  no  work  for  Irishmen  to  do  in  Ireland.  There 
was  no  industry  allowed  to  them  by  which  the  laborer  could  sup- 
plement the  absence  of  agricultural  toil.  England  would  not  allow — 
and  Irish  landlords  and  legislators  would  not  allow — a  race  richly  en- 
dowed with  intelligence,  with  a  rare  aptitude  and  a  natural  loving  for 
handicraft  and  skilled  labor,  to  apply  a  single  talent  to  its  proper 
object  at  home. 

Is  not  this  the  history  of  Irish  misery?  of  Irish  unrest  and  dis- 
content? of  the  revolt  of  the  reason  and  the  sentiments  against  what 
is  unnatural,  absurd,  utterly  at  variance  with  political  wisdom,  en- 
lightened self-interest,  and  all  the  dictates  of  Eeligion  and  humanity? 
Is  not  this  the  root  of  chronic  rebellion  ? 

We  are  comparing  what  Ireland  and  Irishmen  are  by  the  bounti- 
ful provision  of  nature; — what  they  might  and  ought  to  be  through 
the  agencies  of  a  wise  and  liberal  policy; — with  what  blind  political 
passion,  the  fanaticism  of  race  and  religion,  and  the  unreasoning 
greed   of   a   hostile  or   indifferent  landlord  class  have  made  them. 


Opinions  of  English  '"'' Minority^''  and  '''"Majority.'*'*         465 

The  horrible  abuses,  and  the  inconceivable  mistakes  of  this  clironic 
misrule  of  centuries,  must  have  an  end.  The  Landlord  Class  of 
Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  assembled  in  Parliament,  have  it  in  their 
power  to  atone  and  to  repair.  A  minority  of  them,  and  a  very  in- 
fluential one, — say:  Let  the  Celt  disappear  from  Ireland!  We  have 
wronged  him  too  deeply  to  expect  forgiveness.  He  is  a  standing 
menace  to  our  peace,  and  our  homes.  Let  Ireland  become  once 
more  a  pasture,  with  English  and  Scotch  graziers  and  cai'e-takers. 
Since  we  cannot  starve  out  the  Celt,  or  dare  not  exterminate  him,  let 
the  ocean  be  put  between  him  and  us.  By  and  by,  Ireland  will  be- 
come as  British  as  Scotland  is. 

Viui  the  majority, — a  majority  yearly  increasing, — say:  In'o  !  hu- 
manity, justice,  fair  play,  demand  that  we  should  obtain  good  profit- 
able work  for  the  laborer,  secure  homes  on  the  bountiful  earth  for  all 
who  till  it  and  help  to  develop  its  treasures; — let  this,  be  the  law  for 
Ireland  as  well  as  for  England  !  We  have  been  all  wrong  in  our 
treatment  of  the  sister-island;  we  have  done  her  people  and  the  verv 
earth  they  inhabit  an  injury  it  will  take  centuries  to  repair.  But  the 
reparation  must  be  made.  And  precisely  because  it  must  take  so 
long  a  time  to  complete  it,  let  us  begin  it  at  once,  and  without  an 
hour's  delay  ! 

2.   Tlie  Battle  for  Irish  Trade  and  Industry  in  the  Irish 
Parliament. 

We  have  spoken  of  the  Irish  Parliament.  Let  it  not  be  forgotten 
what  a  wretched  sham  was  covered  by  that  name  from  the  time  of 
Orange  William  down  to  the  days  when  Henry  Grattan's  patriotic 
genius  redeemed  it,  for  a  brief  space  only,  from  servility  and  corrup- 
tion. We  know  that  the  miserable  band  of  mitred  bigots  and  Orange 
Lords  who  sat  in  the  Upper  House,  and  the  unprincipled  Commoners 
who  represented  the  English  Colony  only  in  the  Lower, — had  no 
sympathy  with  the  majority  of  the  nation. 

"The  bulk  of  the  House  was  composed  of  the  nominees  of  tlue 
great  Protestant  landowners.  Their  influence  in  the  counties,  where 
30 


466  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

the  number  of  freebold  voters  was  but  limited,  was  overwhelming; 
while  the  boroughs,  nearly  all  of  which  were  erected  on  land  owned 
by  some  great  freeholder,  and  in  which  the  franchise  was  usually 
limited  to  some  half  a  score  of  aldermen  and  the  mayor  or  '  sovereign,' 
who  composed  the  corj)oration  and  were  the  freeholder's  creatures, 
were  to  all  intents  and  purposes  the  private  property  of  the  '  Patron.' 
.  .  .  The  great  object  of  the  powerful  and  wealthy  families  of  the 
Protestant  Ascendancy  was  to  get  command  of  as  many  seats  as  pos- 
sible. The  control  of  votes  meant  political  influence  and  power,  and 
grew  into  a  most  effectual  engine  for  the  extraction  of  lucrative  posts 
from  Government."* 

Here  is  the  way  prepared  and  the  agencies  created  for  the  fright- 
ful corruption  which  Ireland  witnessed  in  the  last  century, — and  the 
crowning  act  of  which  was  tlie  sale  to  England  of  the  Irish  Con- 
stitution. 

"The  lord-lieutenant  spent  iialf  his  time  in  England,  the  Gov- 
ernment was  in  the  hands  of  the  Lords  Justices, — who  usually  were 
the  primate,  the  lord-chancellor,  and  the  speaker  of  the  House  of 
Commons.  .  .  .  The  spirit  of  corruption  which  had  eaten  the  heart 
out  of  English  political  morality,  was  fast  destroying  all  ideas  of 
honor  and  honesty  amongst  the  public  men  of  Ireland.  .  .  .  The 
mouths  of  the  exposers  of  English  iniquity  were  stopped  with 
colonelcies  of  regiments,  peerages,  and  office;  and  tha  country  was 
further  plundered  to  provide  the  hush  money. 

"During  the  last  years  of  George  II.  .  .  .  the  Government  was  in 
the  hands  of  one  of  the  lords  justices,  the  arch-corrupter  Primate 
Hone,  through  whose  hands  the  stream  of  patronage  flowed.  Henry 
Boyle,  the  speaker,  was  also  a  lord  justice,  but  had  none  of  the 
patronage,  and  was  determined  to  secure  it  by  ruining  the  Primate." 

All  this  while  the  Irish  Papists  were  groaning  under  the  load  of 
disabilities  imposed  by  the  Penal  Laws,  and  their  Priests  and  Bishops 
outlawed  and  hunted  into  bogs,  morasses,  or  the  wildest  mountain 

*  "  The  Kingdom  of  Ireland, "  pp.  362,  363. 


Pity  Landlords  were  not  hilled  instead  of  Whiteboys.       467 

tracts.  It  was  the  period  which  gave  birth  to  the  "Whiteboys,  the 
Hearts  of  Steel,  and  the  Oakboys;  a  period  fertile  in  sufferings 
which  it  sickens  the  soul  to  have  to  record.  For  the  two  former 
secret  associations — the  offspring  of  extreme  misery  and  despair — no 
redress  was  found  but  in  extermination  or  emigration:  they  were 
Catholics.  The  Oakboys  were  Protestants;  they  had  serious  griev- 
ances enough  to  complain  of, — but  they  were  neither  disfranchised, 
nor  down-trodden,  nor  starving; — and  they  were  granted  a  hearing, 
and  obtained  redress. 

"If  the  military  force, ^^  said  Lord  Chesterfield,  then  Viceroy, 
"had  killed  half  as  many  landlords  as  it  had  Wliiteboys,  it  would 
have  contributed  more  effectually  to  restore  quiet.  For  the  poor 
people  in  Ireland  are  worse  used  than  negroes  by  their  masters,  and 
deputies  of  deputies  of  deputies." 

So,  in  1768,  the  disturbing  agencies  in  Ireland  were,  not  so  much 
the  poor  slaves  driven  to  desperation  by  brutality,  hard-hearted- 
ness,  and  hunger,  as  "their  masters,  and  deputies  of  deputies  of 
deputies." 

Have  the  troubles  of  1880-85  to  be  traced  to  any  other  causes? 

But  let  us  follow  on  the  track  of  that  Orange  Corruption,  that 
Protestant  Ascendancy  in  Parliament,  which  is  consummating  all  the 
wickedness  of  its  progenitors,  as  well  as  the  ruin  of  unhappy  Ireland. 

1767. — "The  wire-pullers  of  the  Privy  Council,  the  Boyle  and 
Ponsonby  oligarchy,  who  monopolized  the  office  of  lord  justice,  were 
in  the  habit  of  bargaining  with  each  new  lord-lieutenant  as  to  the 
terms  upon  which  they  would  '  undertake '  to  '  carry  on  the  King's 
business.'  For,  as  all  the  loaves  and  fishes,  places,  pensions,  and 
preferments,  passed  through  their  hands,  they  could  command  an 
enormous  majority." 

And  now  came  with  the  breaking  out  of  the  American  "War  of 
Independence,  the  first  dawn  of  hope  for  Ireland.  It  was,  indeed, 
the  darkest  hour  before  dawn. 

"  England  had  done  her  best  to  ruin  her  Protestant  Colony  in  Ire- 
land.    She  had  starved  its  manufactures,  destroyed  its  trade,  made  a 


HENRY      G  RATTAN. 

AJTEB.     THE     PICTUR^E     BV   J .  RS^ISAV. 


Henry  Grattan — tlie  Champion  of  Irish  Free  Trade.        469 

portunity  of  public  opinion  was  becoming  too  strong  to  be  resisted. 
The  excitement  of  the  people  grew  day  by  day  more  formidable.  'J'he 
cry  out  of  doors  was  emphasized  in  Parliament  by  the  purified  patriot 
party,  now  led,  since  Flood's  defection,  by  the  unsullied  Heniy 
Grattan. 

"The  war  was  carried  into  England;  and  Lord  Nugent  and  Ed- 
mund Burke,  in  the  English  House  of  Commons,  moved  that  a  com- 
mittee of  the  whole  House  should  consider  the  trade  of  Ireland.  Five 
resolutions  in  favor  of  allowing  certain  relaxations  were  carried;  but 
when  a  bill  was  brought  in  to  give  them  effect,  so  great  was  the 
clamor  of  Liverpool,  Glasgow,  Manchester,  and  Bristol,  that  nothing 
remained  of  it  but  the  permission  to  export  to  Africa  and  the  West 
Indies  all  home  products  except  wool,  woollen  and  cotton  goods,  hats, 
glass,  hops,  gunpowder,  and  coals!  .  .  . 

"  Lord  North,  alarmed,  .  .  .  cast  his  eyes  on  the  Roman  Catholics 
in  hopes  of  finding  a  counterpoise  to  the  mutinous  Protestants.  .  .  . 
In  1764  leave  to  bring  in  a  bill  to  enable  Eoman  Catholics  to  advance 
money  on  a  mortgage  of  freeholds  had  been  summarily  rejected;  and 
in  1771  the  magnifice7it  concession  was  made  to  them  of  permission  to 
hold  long  leases  of  fifty  acres  of  hog  for  reclamation  iwovided  it  was 
not  within  a  mile  of  any  city  or  town.  And  now,  in  1778,  a  more 
substantial  act  of  justice  was  carried  through:  Roman  Catholics,  on 
taking  the  oath  of  allegiance,  were  to  be  allowed  to  hold  a  lease  of 
999  years.  The  lands  which  were  still  in  their  possession  were  made 
descendible,  divisible,  and  alienable,  like  those  of  other  subjects:  and 
Protestant  heirs  were  deprived  of  the  privilege  given  them  by  the 
statute  of  Anne  to  plunder  and  defy  their  recusant  fathers.  ..." 

So  much  for  a  beginning  of  relief  from  the  oppression  of  tlie 
Penal  Laws.  But,  it  was,  seemingly,  much  harder  to  obtain  a  repeal 
of  the  trade-laws.  An  attempt  made  to  repeal  a  clause  of  the  Navi- 
gation Act  forbidding  the  importation  of  sugar  into  Ireland,  without 
its  passing  through  England,  was  resisted  by  the  English  manufac- 
turers, and  defeated.  John  Bull's  anti-Irish  feelings  was  appealed  to 
successfully.      Then   the   Irish   formed   a   league   against   the   con- 


470  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

sumption  of  Englisli  goods,  which  attacked  John  Bull  on  his  weak 
point — his  pocket. 

On  October  12,  1779,  Grattan  successfully  moved  an  amendment 
to  the  address,  demanding  "Free  Trade,"  and  Lord  North  had  to 
yield.  In  April,  1780,  the  same  Grattan  moved  that  "the  King  with 
the  consent  of  the  Lords  and  Commons  of  Ireland,  are  the  only 
power  competent  to  enact  laws  to  bind  Ireland,"  and  that  "Great 
Britain  and  Ireland  are  inseparably  united  under  one  sovereign." 

It  was  the  first  solemn  demand  for  Home  Eule.  The  demand 
was  not  then  pressed.  The  Castle  Party  was  too  strong  in  the  Irish 
Parliament.  But  the  necessities  of  the  country  created  the  National 
Army.  The  Catholics,  in  all  this,  could  only  look  on.  They  were 
still  rigorously  excluded  from  Parliament  and  all  jDublic  life;  they 
were  Unemancipated. 

Grattan,  in  1782,  again  moved  as  an  amendment  to  the  address,  a 
declaration  of  rights  and  grievances.  Before  the  end  of  the  year  the 
English  Parliament  broke  the  shackles  imposed  under  George  I. 
on  the  Irish  legislature;  and  this  body  itself  hastened  to  repeal 
Poynings'  Act.  This  was  the  first  step  on  the  road  toward  self- 
government. 

In  1785,  the  National  Party  in  Ireland  once  more  demand  the 
restoration  of  Grattan's  Parliament. 

The  \^olunteer  Movement  and  the  Parliamentary  Eeform  Move- 
ment enlisted  the  active  co-operation,  as  well  as  the  deep  sympathy, 
of  the  Catholic  body,  and  led  to  the  formation  of  the  United  Irish- 
men.    The  spirit  of  Nationality  was  abroad. 

Then,  in  1783,  a  renewed  effort  was  made  to  remove  the  restric- 
tions on  Irish  Trade  and  Manufactures.  Pitt  entered  into  the  pro- 
ject. But  the  clamor  and  opposition  were  such  in  manufacturing 
England,  that  the  measures  introduced  by  Pitt  into  Parliament,  un- 
satisfactory as  they  were,  became,  before  they  passed  the  House,  but 
illusory.  When  the  Bill  came  before  the  Irish  Parliament  it  was 
only  passed  by  a  slender  Government  majority. 

This  struggle  on  Irish  Trade  and  Manufactures  gave  birth  in 


Famine  and  Agrarian  Outrage.  471 

England  to  the  opinion  that  the  Irish  Parliament  should  be  sup- 
pressed, lest  Ireland  should  cease  to  be  the  mere  slave  of  England. 
And  the  opinion  became  an  accomplished  fact  on  Jan.  1,  1800. 

But  there  was  a  fearful  interval  to  be  passed  over  before  this  last 
date. 

"In  the  south  the  Whiteboys  had  again  (1784)  appeared  in  Mun- 
ster  under  the  name  of  '  Rightboys ';  an  invisible  Captain  Right 
being  tlie  nominal  head-centre  like  Ever  Joyce  and  Captain  Dwyer. 
The  disorders  were  repetitions  of  what  had  gone  before,  and  arose 
from  the  same  causes.  Government,  instead  of  revnoving  the  miscJiief 
which  culminated  in  the  agrarian  outrages  of  1761,  stamped  out  the 
flames  of  lawlessness  by  coercion,  and  left  the  disease  to  grow  and 
spread  in  silence  until  a  fresh  outbreak  was  inevitable. 

"The  condition  of  the  tenantry  in  Munster  was  very  miserable. 
The  rent  of  potato  ground  had  risen  to  £6  an  acre,  which  was  paid 
in  labor  at  the  rate  of  sixpence  a  day.  There  was  hardly  an  estate 
which  was  not  let  at  a  rack-rent,  or  even  above  its  value.  Even  Fitz- 
gibbon  admitted  in  the  House  of  Commons  that,  '  It  was  impossible 
for  human  wretchedness  to  exceed  that  of  tlie  miserable  tenantry  of 
that  province,' — that  'they  were  ground  to  powder  by  relentless  land- 
lords,'— that  '  they  had  not  food  and  raiment  for  themselves,  but  the 
landlord  grasped  the  whole,'  and  that  'they  lived  in  a  more  abject 
state  of  poverty  than  human  nature  could  be  supposed  able  to  bear.' 

"Over  and  above  the  exactions  of  the  landlords,  the  Church  de- 
manded tithe.  The  pasture  land  was  exempted.  Only  the  cultivable 
land  bore  the  burthen.  The  wretched  cottiers  acre  of  potato  ground 
had,  in  addition  to  the  rent,  hearth-money,  smoke-money,  and  dues 
to  the  Roman  Catholic  priest,  to  pay  from  twelve  shillings  to  twenty 
shillings  to  the  rector  for  tithe.  The  beneficed  clergy,  with  dwindling 
flocks,  lived  away  absentee  fashion,  and  drew  their  tithe-tribute  as  the 
absentee  landlord  drew  his  rack-rent;  and,  like  him,  to  save  the  diffi- 
culty and  risk  of  gathering  it,  farmed  their  tithes  to  a  middleman,  or 
collected  it  through  the  agency  of  a  needy  and  unscrupulous  tithe- 
proctor,  who  .  .  .  made  his  profits  by  extracting  the  last  penny  from 


^72  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

tlie  unfortunate  peasant.  When  the  peasant  could  not  pay,  he  took 
his  bond,  and  charged  him  interest;  and  when  the  bond  fell  due  he 
took  his  debtor's  labor  for  nothing,  and  reduced  him  to  little  better 
than  a  slave. 

"It  was  not  surprising  that  the  down-trodden  wretches  sought  to 
help  themselves  by  acts  of  violence.  .  .  .  Fitzgibbon's  remedy  was  a 
terrijfic  Coercion  Bill;  Grattan's  a  motion  for  a  committee  to  inquire 
into  the  system  of  collecting  tithes,  with  a  plan  for  commuting  the 
tithes  for  an  annual  charge  calculated  upon  an  average  of  years. 
The  former  passed  into  law%  .  .  'Laws  of  Coercion,'  said  Grattan, 
'  perhaps  necessary,  certainly  severe,  you  have  already  put  forth.  But 
your  great  engine  of  power  you  have  hitherto  kept  back — the  engine 
which,  armed  with  ph3'sical  and  moral  blessing,  comes  forth  and  over- 
lays mankind  by  services — the  engine  of  redress.'"* 

3.  Eedress. 

Injury  has  been  done  to  the  land,  as  well  as  injustice  to  the 
people.  This  no  one  will  contest.  In  the  work  of  reparation  deemed 
imperative  and  urgent  by  the  foremost  among  statesmen,  as  well  as 
by  the  civilized  world, — let  the  first  care  be  to  heal  the  wounds  of 
tlie  land  itself,  to  repair  the  wrong  done  to  it  by  cruel  neglect  and 
ill-treatment,  to  restore  and  increase  its  vitality.  Thereby  you  will 
be  providing  a  noble  and  remunerative  field  for  the  laborer.  This 
is  Ireland's  first  and  greatest  need, — remunerative  labor  for  all  her 
hungry  and  idle  toilers, — avenues  to  all  kinds  of  industry  for  the 
activity  of  the  educated  talent  of  the  present  generation. 

Heal  the  inveterate  wounds  inflicted  on  the  soil  of  Ireland  by  the 
blind  greed,  the  spendthrift  recklessness,  and  the  ruinous  neglect  of 
so  many  generations  of  landlords. 

We  Americans  know  from  the  wide-spread  destruction  caused  by 
the  inundations  of  1884  along  the  course  of  the  Ohio  and  the  Mis- 
sissippi, how  needful  are  the  precautions  taken  by  the  States  border- 

*  "  The  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  pp.  400-424 i>assim. 


Necessity  of  Drauiaye  in. Ireland.  473 

ing  these  rivers  to  prevent  the  swollen  waters  from  overflowing  their 
banks  periodically.  The  irreparable  damage  done  within  one  twelve- 
month accuses  the  supineness  and  shortsightedness  both  of  the  people 
themselves  and  of  their  magistrates. 

This  affords  us  a  starting  point  for  estimating  one  of  the  greatest 
injuries  done  to  the  land  in  Ireland  by  the  stupid  carelessness  of  the 
landed  proprietors,  and  by  the  stinginess  and  bungling  of  the  Gov- 
ernment. As  to  the  Irish  'people, — tlie  tillers  of  the  soil, — they  are 
in  no  wise  accountable  for  the  state  of  things  I  am  going  to  describe : 
they  are  only  the  sufferers  with  the  land  itself. 

The  nature  of  the  soil  in  Ireland,  and  the  excessive  humidity  of 
the  climate,  render  necessary,  among  other  artificial  precautions,  an 
extensive  and  most  careful  system  of  Drainage,  arterial  and  local. 
In  Belgium  and  Holland,  where  the  greater  part  of  the  garden-like 
soil  consisted,  at  first,  of  barren  sands  redeemed  from  the  German 
Ocean, — the  marvelous  system  of  dykes  and  drains  is  an  object  of 
intense  solicitude  to  the  Government,  and  it  is  equally  so  to  both  the 
landed  proprietors  and  their  tenants.  The  latter,  secured,  as  they 
are,  in  the  tenure  of  their  farms  and  in  the  enjoyment  of  every  im- 
provement they  make  in  the  soil  itself  and  on  it,  do  not  spare  their 
labor  or  their  money  to  prevent  their  property  from  being  injured  by 
inundations.  This  is  equally  the  case  with  the  landlords,  who  by  law 
or  by  custom  are  bound  to  see  that  everything  on  the  land  is  in  per- 
fect order. 

In  Ireland  even  the  landlords  wdio  can  will  not  drain  the  lands 
they  let  out;  few  indeed,  comparatively,  are  those  who  ever  attempt 
to  make  any  improvements  at  all  on  their  property.  Yet,  in  the 
southern  and  western  counties  of  Ireland,  especially,  the  utmost  care 
and  labor  are  required  to  counteract  the  effects  of  the  excessive  rain- 
fall. If  the  Irish  tenant  felt  secure  in  his  holding,  if  his  landlord 
showed,  practically,  that  he  was  equally  interested  with  his  farmer  in 
improving  the  land  and  enabling  it  to  yield  to  the  utmost,  the  tenant 
would  not  hesitate  to  take  on  himself,  by  degrees, — even  though  the 
landlord  did  not  help  him,  the  labor  and  expense  of  draining  his  farm. 


474  Thfi  Cause  of  Ireland. 

But, — you  will  ask, — why  does  he  not  do  so  now,  since  the  land- 
law  of  1881  gives  him  the  required  security  in  his  holding? — The 
peremptory  answer  is, — that  the  benefits  of  this  law  have  been  ren- 
dered almost  nugatory  by  the  action  of  the  Land  Commissioners' 
Courts  to  whom  the  adjustment  of  all  difficulties  between  landlords 
and  tenants  was  intrusted.  There  is,  at  this  moment,  very  little 
more  security  for  the  agricultural  class  in  Ireland  than  existed  before 
1880. 

We  repeat,  therefore,  the  words  of  the  most  considerate  and  con- 
scientious writer,  who  has,  of  late  years,  treated  of  all  these  vexed 
Irish  questions.  "There  can  be  no  doubt,"  says  Count  Murphy, 
"  that  if  tlie  Irish  farmer  enjoyed  a  secure  tenure,  defeasible  only  by 
non-payment  of  rent — if,  in  fact,  he  felt  he  was  laboring  for  himself 
— he  not  only  would  thoroughly  till  his  land,  but  he  would  avail  of 
Government  aid  for  drainage  purposes,  borrowing,  under  the  Land 
Improvement  Acts,  money,  to  be  repaid,  principal  and  interest,  in 
twenty-two  annual  instalments  of  6|  per  cent.;  or,  better  still,  if  a 
desirable  modification  of  the  Act  were  carried  out,  in  thirty-five  an- 
nual instalments  of  5  per  cent. 

"This  double  improvement — thorough  culture  and  local  drainage, 
in  conjunction  with  complete  arterial  drainage — would  rapidly  carry 
off  the  superfluous  water,  which  now  lies  so  long,  in  wet  seasons,  on 
low,  flat  lands,  and  would  greatly  diminish  the  evaporative  surface; 
thus  considerably  ameliorating  the  climate,  and  vastly  improving  the 
agriculture  of  the  country. 

.  .  .  "In  several  districts  of  the  country,  undrained  and  badly 
farmed,  with  the  land  saturated  and  a  low  temperature,  in  wet  sum- 
mers, it  is  impossible  for  the  plant,  chilled  in  a  cold  soil,  to  attain  its 
normal  growth;  and  hence  these  districts  are  but  too  generally  char- 
acterized by  inferior  cereals  and  root  crops,  and  sour,  innutritions 
pasture.  .  .  .  The  difference  between  drained  and  undrained  lands 
has  been,  not  inaptly,  compared  to  the  contrast  presented  by  the 
state  of  a  man  enjoying  full  reaction  after  a  healthy  cold  ^  bath,  and 
the  condition  of  a  traveler  obliged  to  sit  for  hours  in  wet  clothes, 


Benefit  it  would  be  to  the  People.  475 

tliorouglily  chilled.  In  the  one  case  there  has  been  a  brief,  in- 
vigorating immersion,  followed  by  a  glow;  in  the  other  case,  a  pro- 
tracted, thorough  drenching,  abstracting  animal  heat,  and  lowering 
the  vital  powers. 

.  .  .  "As  things  are,  it  is  painful  to  witness,  in  many  parts  of  Ire- 
land, how  much  suffering  and  poverty  are  entailed  on  individuals  and 
whole  districts,  what  valuable  resources  for  the  production  of  food  for 
the  community  lie  all  but  useless,  and  what  serious  loss  and  injur}^ 
material  and  moral,  accrue  to  the  British  Empire,  for  the  want  of 
that  judicious  application  of  labor  and  capital,  which  would  change 
cold,  ungrateful  soils  into  rich  tracts,  blooming  with  fertility,  and 
convert  a  poor,  half-idle,  and  discontented  population  into  comfort- 
able and  contented  productive  laborers.  The  Irish  complain,  and 
certainly  with  reason,  that  whilst  millions  of  the  public  money  are 
expended  on  other  parts  of  the  United  Kingdom,  those  great  works 
which  only  Government  can  deal  with,  such  as  the  deepening  of  river 
beds,  and  the  arterial  drainage  of  large  districts,  are  nearly  altogether 
neglected  in  Ireland,  where  there  is  so  much  work  of  the  kind  to  be 
done."* 

It  is  sad  to  think,  that  while  England  is  expending  on  an  ex- 
pedition into  the  interior  of  Egypt  so  much  money  and  so  much  of 
her  best  blood, — the  thirty  millions  sterling  this  "wild  goose  chase" 
is  likely  to  cost  her,  would  have  more  than  sufficed  to  settle  the 
Land  Question  for  ever  in  Ireland.  It  would  have  enabled  the  Board 
of  Works  to  carry  out  on  every  point  of  the  island  that  system  of 
arterial  drainage,  which,  begun  by  incompetent  and  unskilful  en- 
gineers, has  only  helped  to  extend  instead  of  narrowing  the  area 
annually  flooded  by  the  Shannon  and  its  affluents.  It  would  have 
established  all  round  the  Irish  coast  a  prosperous  fishing  population, 
with  piers,  harbors  of  refuge,  and  excellent  deep-sea  fishing  craft, 
such  as  the  generous  liberality  of  Lady  Burdett-Coutts  has  given  to 
Baltimore  and  the  Cape  Clear  Islands.  What  a  mine  of  wealth  is 
there!  And  how  surely  the  imperial  treasury  would  receive  back 
*  "  Ireland  Industrial,  Political,  and  Social,"  pp.  89,  90. 


476  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

every  shilling  thus  expended,  and  receive  as  well  the  blessings  and 
gratitude  of  the  warm  Irish  heart! 

Instead, — what  has  Government  done  to  drain  the  inundated  dis- 
tricts in  Ireland,  and  help  to  make  of  the  island,  what  it  ought  to  be 
and  is  by  nature, — fertile,  productive,  a  land  of  plenty  throughout  its 
length  and  breadth  ? 

The  area  drained  by  the  Shannon  and  its  tributaries— the  Suck,  the 
Inny,  and  the  Fergus — comprises  6,060  square  miles,  nearly  one-fifth 
of  the  surface  of  the  island.  A  first  survey  was  ordei'ed  by  Government 
ill  1831,  and  made  in  1833.  It  advised  the  construction  of  a  weir 
across  the  Shannon  at  Killaloe,  where  Lough  Derg  empties  itself  into 
that  river.  The  weir  was  to  be  of  such  height  as  to  insure  a  uni- 
form depth  of  water  in  the  Lake  itself,  and  an  overflow  of  six  feet 
over  the  sill  of  the  lock  at  Killaloe.  The  plans  and  drawings  left  no 
room  for  misconception  or  doubt.  Yet  the  engineers  who  con- 
structed the  weir  took  on  themselves  to  alter  its  height,  so  as  to  give 
it  six  feet  nine, inches  in  height,  and  seven  feet  in  some  parts, — 
thereby  preventing  the  water  from  ever  sinking  below  seven  feet  on 
the  sill,  and  throwing  six  inches  of  water  out  over  thousands  of  acres 
of  land,  which  would  be  above  water  if  the  engineer  had  adhered  to 
the  plan  and  to  his  instructions. 

Moreover,  as  the  report  of  Mr.  Ehodes,  who  made  the  survey  and 
prepared  the  original  plans,  indicates,  "  the  widening  and  deepening 
of  the  channel  at  Killaloe  has  not  been  completed  either  to  the 
breadth  or  depth  delineated  on  the  Parliamentary  maps ;  a  breadth 
of  one  hundred  feet  on  the  Tipperary  side  remains  there  still  not  cut 
away,  and  a  depth  of  six  feet  remains  in  the  bottom  towards  the 
same  side  not  yet  excavated." 

"Next,"  continues  Count  Murphy,  "with  a  view  of  maintaining 
the  height  of  water  deemed  necessary  for  steam  navigation  on  the 
Shannon,  between  Carrick-on-Shannon  and  Killaloe,  one  hundred 
and  ten  miles  in  dry  summer  weather,  six  great  stone  weir- walls  were 
erected,  and  in  none  of  these  was  there  any  sluice  or  flood-gate  to  let 
off  surplus  water." 


Government  Drainage  a  disastrous  Failure.  477 

The  consequence  of  this  gross  neglect  or  stupidity  in  the  con- 
structors, is  that  "almost  every  year  small  floods  occur  which  cover 
the  low  portions  of  the  lands,  and  saturate  the  remainder,  rendering 
them  unfit  for  pasture,  and  making  it  very  difficult  to  get  a  hay  crop 
dried." 

Great  autumnal  floods  inundate  16,399  acres  of  arable  pasture  and 
meadow  land.  Great  winter  floods  every  year  cover  30,825  acres  of 
arable,  meadow,  and  pasture  land,  damaging  annually  23,945  acres 
of  land  in  a  distance  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles.  About  40,000 
are  damaged  by  winter  floods  on  the  river  Suck. 

To  remedy  all  this  it  is  estimated  that  an  expenditure  of  £143,920 
would  suffice.  The  improvements  in  drainage  made  along  twenty- 
three  of  the  streams  tributary  to  the  Shannon,  throw  the  additional 
flow  of  water  thereby  caused  to  fall  into  the  Shannon  Valley,  while  no 
improvements  have  been  made  in  the  outlets  of  the  Shannon  itself  to 
meet  this  great  influx  of  water  fi'om  1,690,000  acres  of  land. 

"Here,  after  a  lapse  of  five-and-thirty  years,"  says  Count  Murphy, 
writing  in  1869,  "the  plan  then  determined  on  is  yet  incomplete,  the 
inundation  and  saturation  of  the  land,  for  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles 
along  the  banks  of  the  river,  continue;  nay,  are  worse  than  hefore 
the  great  stone  weir-walls  Avere  erected,  and  before  the  increased 
waters  of  twenty-three  tributaries  .  .  .  were  turned  into  the  channel 
of  the  Shannon  !  A  comparatively  small  amount  was  the  estimate  of 
what  was  required  to  set  matters  so  far  right;  and  while  millions 
of  the  public  money  have  been  expended  on  Holyhead,  Portland, 
and  other  parts  of  England, — all,  no  doubt,  most  important  and 
most  useful  public  works, — nothing  has  been  done  in  this  which 
must  be  characterized  as  a  great  imperial  and  not  a  mere  local 
undertaking.  .  .  . 

"Within  a  few  weeks  the  'Times'  Commissioner  has  alluded  to 
similar  evils,  arising  from  a  like  cause,  on  the  banks  of  the  Barrow. 
As  he  proceeds  he  will  meet  many  districts  to  which  the  same  re- 
marks apply.  Let  us  hope  that,  the  land  question  once  settled,  this, 
the  next  most  important  subject — the  thorough  arterial  drainage  of 


478  The  Cmise  of  Ireland. 


Ireland — will  engage  the  attention  of  Government  and    the  Legis- 
lature." * 

This  is  what  the  English  Parliament  has  done  with  the  land  of 
Ireland.  Now  let  ns  read  the  last  chapter  of  English  misrule  in  the 
last  century. 


*  "  Ireland  Industrial,  Political,  and  Social,"  pp.  96,  97. 


IV. 

The  End  of  the  Penal  Laws  and  the  Triumph  of  Coercion 
AND  Corruption  (1794-1800). 

A  MEMORABLE  event,  in  so  far  especially  as  Ireland  is  con- 
cerned,  was  the  coalition  formed  in  the  summer  of  1794,  by  the 
moderate  Whigs  with  William  Pitt.  Foremost  among  the  coalition- 
ists were  Lord  Fitzwilliam  and  Edmund  Burke, — both  Irishmen,  and 
both  bent  on  obtaining  from  the  British  Parliament  a  full  measure 
of  justice  for  their  native  country,  and  in  particular  for  the  dis- 
franchised Catliolics.  They  were  both  for  the  total  emancipation  of 
the  latter;  for  granting  them  liberty  to  sit  in  parliament;  liberty  to 
become  members  of  the  corporations;  and  liberty  to  bear  arms. 

They  had  to  count  on  the  desperate  resistance  of  the  Pi'otestant 
Ascendancy  in  Ireland,  and  on  the  opposition  of  the  great  landlord 
interest  and  the  Established  Church  in  England.  These,  when 
emancipation  was  proposed,  would  be  sure  to  combine  and  to  act 
with  perfect  unity  of  purpose. 

Pitt  acted  with  duplicity.  Even  then  he  had  conceived  the  idea 
of  suppressing  Irish  nationality  altogether.  And  the  question  is 
whether  he  did  not  encourage  Burke  and  Fitzwilliam  to  lead  "a  for- 
lorn hope,"  knowing  they  could  not  carry  the  stronghold  defended  by 
British  interest  and  Protestant  bigotry. 

Lord  Fitzwilliam  was  sent  to  Ireland  as  Lord  Lieutenant,  and  al- 
lowed to  believe  that  he  had  carte  Uanclie  to  carry  out  the  necessary 
reforms.  He  landed  at  Dublin,  January  4,  1795,  amid  the  acclama- 
tions of  a  delighted  people,  who  had  been  made  aware  of  his  purpose 

(479) 


EDMUND       BURKE. 

AFTER.   Tirs:    PICTURE]    B^  c5-  R.ai<cM£rsr 


The  Birth  of  Orangeism.  481 

(Fitzgibbon)  was  stoned,  one  missile  wounding  him  in  the  head. 
Torrents  of  Irisli,  of  innocent  blood  were  destined  to  atone  for  that 
one  wound. 

Grattan's  emancipation  bill  was  lost.     Protestant  Ascendancy  was 
victorious  all  along  the  line. 

The  United  Irishmen  of  Wolfe  Tone  had  been  suppressed.  But 
the  sudden  defeat  of  the  nation's  hopes,  turned  men  away  from  legal 
and  constitutional  patlis,  into  the  dai'k  ways  of  secret  societies.  That 
of  the  United  Irishmen  speedily  covered  the  land  with  a  network  of 
branches,  all  organized  on  a  military  plan.  In  Ulster  the  terrible 
struggle  between  the  Protestant  "Peep-o'-day  Boys  "and  the  Catholic 
"Defenders"  assumed  the  proportions  of  a  civil  war.  The  former 
took  it  on  themselves  to  disarm  their  Catholic  neighbors,  and  to 
search  their  houses  by  night  for  arms  of  every  description.  The 
latter,  irritated  and  driven  to  madness  by  the  wanton  outrages  and 
unauthorized  action  of  their  adversaries,  organized  themselves  into 
a  self-protecting  association. 

Then  sprang  up  Orangeism,  into  which  entered  the  great  body 
of  the  northern  gentlemen,  and  whose  baneful  existence  down  to  this 
very  day  has  been  marked  with  bloodshed  and  the  fiercest  intolerance. 
"This  organization  grew  rapidly.     It  acted  promptly  and  with 
terrible  effect.     It  declared  war   against  the  Defenders, "a^^^  operily 
professed  as  its  object  the  complete  expulsion  of  all  Roman  Catholics 
from  Ulster.     The  Eoman  Catholics  were  attacked  indiscrimijiately. 
Masters  were  compelled  to  dismiss  Eoman  Catholic  servants,  land- 
lords to  dismiss   Eoman  Catholic   tenants.     Decent  farmers,    quiet 
peasants,  hard-working  weavers,  quite  unconnected  with  the  Defend- 
ers, received  notices  ^to  go  to  Hell;  Connaught  would  not  receive 
them.'     Their  houses  were   burnt,  their  furniture  broken  up,  and 
they  and  their  families  driven  from  their  holdings. 

"Lord  Gosford,  the  Governor  of  Armagh  County,  in  addressing 

the   magistrates   at   quarter  sessions    in   December,    1795,    publicly 

declared   that    'neither   age,   nor  sex,  nor  even   acknowledged   in- 

nocence  as  to  any  guilt  in  the  late  disturbances  is  sufficient  to  excite 

31 


482  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

mercy,  much  less  to  afford  protection.  The  only  crime  which  the 
objects  of  this  ruthless  persecution  are  charged  with,  is  simply  a  pro- 
fession of  the  Roman  Catholic  religion.  A  lawless  banditti  have 
constituted  themselves  judges  of  this  new  species  of  delinquency,  and 
the  sentence  they  have  pronounced  is  nothing  less  than  a  confiscation 
of  all  property  and  an  immediate  banishment.  ..."  Xo  protection 
could  be  obtained  from  the  magistrates,  whose  sympathies  were  all 
with  the  Orangemen,  and  of  whom  many  were  themselves  members 
of  Orange  Lodges. 

"General  Henry  Luttrell,  Lord  Carhampton,  had  been  sent  into 
the  West  to  suppress  the  Defenders.  .  .  .  Tlie  gaols  Avere  full  of  per- 
sons awaiting  their  trial.  Carhampton  preceded  the  judges  of  assize 
with  his  troops,  and,  without  any  form  of  trial  or  under  any  warrant, 
drew  out  the  prisoners  and  sent  them  on  board  a  tender,  which  sailed 
along  the  coast  to  receive  them,  and  shipped  them  on  board  the 
British  fleet  for  compulsor}'^  iiaval  service.  The  local  magistrates 
followed  his  example,  arresting  and  transporting  without  a  pretence 
of  legality.  Ujmards  of  a  thousand  persons  were  the  victims  of  this 
aristocratic  press-gang."  * 

It  was  simply  extermination  on  a  limited  scale.  And  these  acts 
were  covered  by  a  bill  of  indemnity,  passed  in  January,  1796  ! 

Of  course  all  this  was  planned  and  executed  under  directions 
from  the  Castle.  The  Castle  also,  as  was  natural,  obtained  from  its 
docile  Parliament  a  Coekcion  Act.  Let  us  see  how  this  Govern- 
ment, which,  but  yesterday,  was  all  professions  of  kindness  and  long- 
deferred  justice  toward  the  poor  oppressed  Irish  people,  meant  to 
coerce  them,  while  allowing  the  Orangemen  to  terrorize  over  the 
Dorth  and  depopulate  it. 

"All  persons  convicted  of  administeriiig  unlawful  oaths  for  sedi- 
tious purposes  should  suffer  death  as  felons;  all  persons  taking  such 
oatlis  should  be  transported;  all  persons  should  be  compelled  to  reg- 
ister the  arms  in  their  possession  under  penalties  of  fine  and  impris- 

*  "Ireland  Industrial,  Political,  and  Social." 


A  "Bloody  Code."  483 

onment;  magistrates  might  break  into  and  enter  houses  to  search  for 
arms,  might  apprehend  strangers  and  examine  them  on  oath,  and 
commit  them  to  the  house  of  correction  till  they  could  find  sureties 
for  their  good  behavior.  It  gave  power  to  the  Viceroy  to  proclaim 
counties  which  the  magistrates  reported  to  liim  were  in  a  state  of  dis- 
turbance. In  a  proclaimed  county  the  inhabitants  were  commanded 
to  keep  within  doors  between  sunset  and  sunrise,  itnder  pain  of  being 
brought  before  the  justices,  who  were  therer,pon  empowered,  unless 
they  were  satisfied  with  the  reasons  given  for  such  person  being 
abroad,  at  once  to  send  him  to  serve  on  board  the  British  navy.  .  .  . 
Persons  who  could  not  prove  that  they  either  had  means  of  their  own, 
or  'industriously  followed  some  lawful  trade  or  employment,' were 
liable  to  the  same  penalties. 

"This  'bloody  code,'  as  Curran  called  it,  passed  into  law  with 
little  opposition.  Even  Grattan's  effort  to  obtain  the  insertion  of  a 
special  reference  to  the  insurgent  Orangemen  and  a  clause  to  enable 
the  ruined  peasants  and  weavers  of  Armagh  to  obtain  compensation 
from  the  county,  was  summarily  rejected.  Lord  Edward  Fitzgerald 
was  the  only  person  who  had  courage  to  vote  against  the  Government. 

"The  United  Irishmen  now  rapidly  increased  in  number.  The 
ignorant  Defenders  .  .  .  were  swept  into  their  ranks.  The  persecuted 
Eoman  Catholics  of  Armagh,  Down,  and  Louth,  hopeless  of  protec- 
tion from  the  law,  turned  to  this  daring  association  for  redress.  The 
disappointed  Roman  Catholics  of  the  middle  classes  in  Dublin  were 
infected  with  the  same  spirit.  Even  some  of  the  advanced  and 
ardent  reformers  in  Parliament  itself,  having  lost  all  hope  of  con- 
stitutional reform,  took  the  desperate  and  fatal  resolution  of  ap- 
pealing to  force  and  the  enemies  of  England.  .  .  ."* 

The  fury  of  the  elements  alone  preserved  Ireland  from  Hoche's 
fleet  and  formidable  army.  Providence  also,  to  whom  Ireland  had 
looked  up  with  undoubting  faith  all  through  the  long,  long  night  of 
her  humiliation  and  sorrow,  did  not  want  the  seeds  of  the  French 

*  "  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  ch.  xv. 


484  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

impiety  to  be  sown  broadcast  over  a  soil  watered  by  the  tears  and 
hallowed  by  the  blood  of  so  many  generations  of  His  believers. 

But  the  nation  was  to  be  held  responsible  and  to  be  punished  still 
more  atrociously  for  the  French  attempt  at  invasion.  The  Habeas 
Corjjus  was  suspended  by  act  of  Parliament;  and  early  in  1797  Gen- 
eral Lake  was  sent  into  Tyrone  with  an  army  all  too  ready  to  exter- 
minate a  people  of  brothers.  The  gaols  were  filled  with  thousands  of 
the  suspected.  "Spies  and  informers  were  the  only  witnesses,  and 
of  these  the  Government  had  a  whole  army  in  its  pay.  .  .  .  Worst  of 
all.,  no  discipline  was  maintained  amongst  the  soldiery,  who  were 
allowed  to  commit  all  kinds  of  excesses,  and  to  abuse  and  maltreat 
the  people.  The  yeomanry,  which  had  been  called  out,  was  com- 
posed almost  eyitirely  of  Orangemen,  and  these,  with  militia  regiments 
sent  over  from  England,  were  encouraged  to  play  havoc  with  the 
miserable  inhabitants  of  the  proclaimed  counties.  A  Welsh  mounted 
veomanry  corps  called  the  Ancient  Britons,  under  the  command  of 
Sir  Watkins  Williams  Wynne,  were  especially  notorious  for  their 
brutal  violence.  Houses  were  plundered  and  burned,  women  out- 
raged, and  children  brutally  ill-treated  and  murdered.  Men  were 
seized  and  sent  on  board  tenders  untried.  They  were  flogged, 
'picketed,'  and  half-hung,  to  extort  confessions  as  to  the  existence 
of  concealed  arms.  They  were  hunted  down  and  sabred.  Villages 
and  whole  districts  were  devastated,  and  the  inhabitants  turned  out 
of  their  homes  into  the  ditch."  * 

Men  and  women — few  indeed — are  still  living,  on  whose  eyes  in 
childhood  fell  the  flames  of  these  lurid  flres,  and  whose  families  were 
involved  in  these  unmerited  calamities.  Are  these  dreadful  traditions 
never  to  cease  among  our  race  ? 

So, — the  armies  of  Cromwell  found  worthy  imitators  in  those 
of  Lake.  .  .  . 

Grattan  and  his  noble  supporters,  though  sick  at  heart,  would  not 
give  up  the  hope  of  saving  the  country  from  the  threatened  extermi- 

*  "  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  ch.  xvii. 


What  the  United  Irishmen  wanted.  485 

nation,  and  obtaining  for  the  Irish  Catholics  some  show  of  substantial 
justice.  "They  had  taken  the  bold  step  of  discovering  from  some 
of  the  leaders  of  the  United  Irishmen  what  measure  of  reform  would 
content  them;  and  the  latter,  sobered  by  the  failure  of  the  expedition 
to  Bantry,  declared  that  the  following  concessions  would  satisfy  them: 
namely, — a  full  representation  of  the  people  of  Ireland,  without  any 
religious  distinction,  based  upon  a  property  qualification,  which  the 
Parliament  should  determine;  equal  electoral  districts,  containing 
each  6,000  houses  and  returning  two  members;  and  provisions  that 
Eoman  Catholics  should  be  equally  eligible  with  Protestants  for  seats 
in  the  House  of  Commons  and  all  offices  of  State.  This,  they  dis- 
tinctly averred,  would  put  an  end  to  the  agitation;  and  Ponsonby 
accordingly  prepared  a  bill  and  moved  a  series  of  resolutions  on 
reform  embodying  these  very  reasonable  heads.  But  the  House  of 
Commons  was  now  the  mere  tool  of  the  Government.  .  .  On  the  divis- 
ion but  30  went  into  the  Opposition  lobby;  170  voted  with  the  Castle." 

On  reading  over  "these  very  reasonable  heads,"  and  comparing 
them  with  the  measures  either  brought  in  by  the  Gladstone  Govern- 
ment and  those  insisted  on  by  the  National  Party, — how  is  it  possible 
not  to  be  struck  with  the  judicial  blindness  which  prevents  men  in 
power  from  granting  in  time  what  must  at  length  be  conceded,  but 
only  when  the  concession  comes  too  late? 

"A  full  representation  of  the  people  of  Ireland;  equal  electoral 
districts":  this  was  only  to  come  at  tlie  close  of  1884.  If  granted  in 
1797,  togetlier  with  the  other  necessary  measures  since  wrung,  one  by 
one,  from  English  statesmen, — how  many  crimes,  how  much  misery, 
would  have  been  spared  to  Ireland  ? 

Coercion  will  never  overaAve  the  Celtic  nature.  Injustice  maddens 
it.  Kindness,  at  any  time,  will  disarm  it.  Lake's  ferocious  soldiery, 
backed  by  Wynne's  Welsh  savages,  and  the  sanguinary  hypocrites  of 
the  Orange  Lodges,  could  not  quell  the  spirit  of  the  Celt.  He  was 
unarmed,  or  armed  only  with  the  clumsiest  weapons;  but  he  would 
not  allow  his  dear  ones  to  be  murdered  and  outraged  before  his  eyes, 
without  casting  himself  against  the  steel  of  the  oppressor. 


486  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

"The  numbers  of  the  United  Irishmen  received  an  enormous 
increase.  The  persecution  drove  the  hikewarm  into  their  ranks,  and 
converted  them  into  earnest  sympathizers.  At  the  same  time  the 
half-stifled  disaffection  assumed  a  more  dangerous  character.  The 
cruelties  of  the  troops  produced  acts  of  retaliation.  Isolated  murders 
became  frequent.  Magistrates  were  fired  at,  and  sometimes  killed. 
Plots  were  laid  by  desperate  fanatics  for  assassinating  the  obnoxious 
members  of  the  executive,  especially  Lord  Carhampton,  the  com- 
mander-in-chief, who  was  the  object  of  the  most  bitter  detestation. 
The  agents  of  the  society  were  working  hard  to  disseminate  their 
political  doctrines  and  to  enlist  members.  Fresh  communications 
were  opened  with  France.  Hoche  Avas  still  enthusiastic,  and  Tone 
still  hopeful." 

We  must  not  enter  into  the  details  of  the  horrible  Tragedy  which 
filled,  in  Ireland,  what  remained  of  the  year  1797,  and  the  whole  of 
1798.  The  awful  corruption  by  which  William  Pitt  and  Dublin 
Castle  bought  up  the  Irish  Parliament  and  consummated  the  long- 
cherished  project  of  the  Legislative  Union  of  both  countries,  is,  in 
reality,  only  the  last  act  in  this  Drama. 

It  is  time,  however,  that  the  civilized  world  should  lift  up  its 
voice  and  cry  Shame  !  on  that  same  Dublin  Castle,  that  spionym 
with  every  species  of  political  crime,— oppression,  fraud,  rapacity, 
and  corruption,— with  every  form  of  moral  infamy  that  can  provoke 
the  loathing  of  earth  and  Heaven. 

"They  had  (in  1797)  spies  everywhere,  even  amongst  the  most 
trusted  leaders.  .  .  .  They  held  in  their  pay,  not  the  farmers  and 
shopkeepers  who  composed  the  rank  and  file  (of  the  United  Irish- 
men), but  the  broken-down  gentlemen,  the  briefless  barristers,  the 
spendthrift  militia  officers,  who  joined  the  association  for  the  purpose 
of  betraying  it.  One  of  the  informers,  McGucken,  was  the  solicitor 
to  the  Society  at  Belfast.  He  received  (from  the  Castle)  a  pension  of 
£150  a  year  and  the  sum  of  £1,450  in  cash.  Leonard  McNally,  the 
barrister  who  appeared  for  them  in  Crown  prosecutions,  received  a 
pension  of  £300  a  year.    Nicholas  Magnan  of  Saintfield  was  a  member 


Major  Sirr's  Gang.  48'^ 

of  the  county  and  provincial  committees,  and  regularly  betrayed  their 
plans  through  a  third  party.  John  Hughes,  a  bookseller  of  Belfast, 
was  repeatedly  arrested  and  imprisoned  along  with  other  members  of 
the  society,  in  order  to  disarm  suspicion,  and  to  learn  their  secrets  iu 
the  character  of  a  fellow-victim.  But  the  arch-traitors  of  all  were 
Thomas  Reynolds  of  Kilkea  Castle  in  the  county  of  Kildare,  who  was 
Tone's  wife's  brother-in-law;  and  Captain  Armstrong  of  Ballycumber, 
an  officer  in  the  Kings  County  militia;  who,  on  becoming  members, 
deliberately  wormed  their  way  into  the  families  of  the  chief  conspira- 
tors, received  their  hospitality,  and  eat  their  salt,  in  order  that  they 
might  betray  them.  Reynolds  received  the  sum  of  £5,000  and  a  pen- 
sion of  £1,000  a  year,  as  the  reward  of  his  share  in  the  dirty  work, 
and  Armstrong  a  pension  of  £500. 

"But  besides  these  men,  and  others  who  had  information  to  give, 
there  was  a  motley  crowd  of  informers.  Major  Sirr's  Gang,  as  Mr. 
Secretary  Cooke  calls  them,  who  lived  upon  the  Government.  It  was 
their  daily  bread  to  keep  the  Castle  well  plied  with  stories  of  conspir- 
acy and  insurrection.  They  exaggerated,  they  distorted,  they  invented 
words  and  actions  often  of  innocent  men — sometimes  to  earn  their 
reward,  sometimes  to  gratify  some  personal  spite.  These  were  the 
men  into  whose  hands  the  Government  committed  the  lives,  liberties, 
and  reputations  of  Irishmen;  of  whom  Lord  Moira  said,  in  the  Irish 
House  of  Lords,  'That  he  sliuddered  to  think  that  such  wretches 
should  find  employment  or  protection  under  any  Government.'"* 

People,  in  perusing  these  details,  will  be  carried  forward  to  the 
events  occurring  at  the  present  day,  and  ask  themselves  if  Dublin 
Castle,  like  History,  is  not  constantly  repeating  itself,  so  much  do  its 
men  and  methods  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  re- 
semble those  whose  infamy  stands  out  so  conspicuously  among  the 
rascally  generation  ruled  by  them  toward  the  end  of  the  eighteenth. 

Sir  Ralph  Abercromby,  an  honest  and  manly  soldier,  had  been 
sent  by  the  English  Government  to  replace  Luttrell,  whose  high- 

*  "  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  pp.  i73,  474. 


488  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

handed  cruelty  was  denounced  by  both  Houses  of  Parhament  in 
England.  We  need  only  read  his  own  letters  to  see  to  what  a  condi- 
tion of  despair  or  frenzy  the  British  troops  had  reduced  the  country 
populations.  The  local  magistrates  had  everywhere  been  encouraged 
by  tlie  Castle  officials  to  require  the  presence  of  the  military  on  the 
first  signs  or  suspicions  of  disaffection  in  their  neighborhood.  "They 
had  been  billeted  upon  private  houses  and  permitted  to  live  in  com- 
plete license  upon  the  people,  and  expressly  ordered  to  act  in  their  own 
discretion  without  waiting  for  the  direction  of  the  civil  authorities.  .  .  . 
'Within  less  than  two  months/ writes  Abercromby,  'a  private  man 
has  thrown  a  chair  at  the  colonel  of  his  regiment,  when  sent  for  to 
be  reprimanded.  Houses  have  been  burnt,  men  murdered,  others 
half-hanged.  A  young  lady  has  been  carried  off  by  a  detachment 
of  dragoons.  .  .  .  These  are  but  a  few  of  the  enormities  which  have 
disgraced  us  of  late:  were  the  whole  to  be  collected,  what  a  picture 
would  it  present !  .  .  .  Within  these  twelve  months  every  crime,  every 
cruelty,  that  could  he  committed  hy  Cossacks  or  Cahnucks,  has  been 
committed  here.  .  .  .  The  way  in  which  the  troops  have  been  em- 
ployed would  ruin  the  best  in  Europe.'" 

There  were  35,000  yeomanry  under  arms.  To  be  sure,  they  were 
mainly  composed  of  Orangemen,  or  such  as  favored  the  principles  and 
practices  of  the  Lodges.  General  Abercromby  wished  to  keep  his 
troops  distinct  from  these;  and  not  to  have  the  reputation  of  the 
army  tarnished  by  the  lawlessness  and  ferocity  of  these  partisans.  It 
was  too  late.  The  mischief  had  been  done.  And  the  general  orders 
prescribing  strict  military  discipline,  and  the  violation  of  the  civil  law, 
save  in  presence  and  under  the  direction  of  the  civil  magistrate,  were 
distasteful  to  the  soldiers,  and  no  less  so  to  the  Castle  officials. 

"The  Ascendancy  party,  the  stern  fanatic  Clare,  the  grasping 
Beresford,  the  affrighted  Foster,  the  supple  sycophant  Cooke,  the 
mercenary  Archbishop  Agar,  the  ribald  heartless  Toler,  were  furious 
at  the  issue  of  the  order.  They  liad  clamored  for  Martial  Law,  and 
were  enjoying  the  free  exercise  of  its  privileges;  they  ivere  recklessly 
driving  the  disaffected  into  open  revolt,  in  order  that  they  might  have 


How  a  People  are  maddened  into  Rebellion.  489 

the  excuse  for  crusldng  them  effectually.  John  Beresford  had  said, 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  that  '  he  wished  they  were  in  rebellion 
to  meet  them  face  to  face/  Lord  Camden  afterwards  admitted,  in 
the  English  House  of  Lords,  that  'the  measures  of  the  Government 
caused  the  rebellion  to  break  out  sooner  than  it  otherwise  would.'" 

They  made  the  situation  intolerable  to  Abercromby.  He  resigned, 
and  the  command  was  given  to  the  sanguinary  Lake.  "Lord  Cam- 
den's Government  had  it  all  their  own  way.  The  old  system  of 
free  quarters  was  continued;  Leinster  was  dragooned  like  Ulster; 
the  houses  of  the  peasantry  were  burning  in  all  directions.  In  Car- 
low,  in  Kildare,  in  Wicklow,  their  owners  were  chased  away  and  shot 
down  by  the  soldiers;  and  men  were  flogged  and  '  picketed '  at  the 
whim  of  any  magistrate  or  officer,  in  order  to  compel  them  to  disclose 
concealed  arms.  No  man  was  safe;  sliopkeeper  and  artisan  equally 
had  their  hacks  cut  to  the  hone;  farmer  and  lahorer  were  equally  tor- 
tured on  the  pointed  stake.  The  United  Irishmen  were  believed  to 
have  cut  their  hair  short  for  distinction's  sake;  and  Avhen  the  sol- 
diers found  a  'croppy,'  as  they  called  him,  they  smeared  his  head 
with  pitch  and  crowned  him  with  a  cap  of  strong  brown  paper,  which 
could  not  be  removed  without  lacerating  the  scalp.  To  wear  Green, 
the  national  color,  even  if  the  wearer  was  a  lady,  was  a  certain  means 
of  insuring  insult  and  outrage.  .  .  .  The  innocent  were  tortured 
with  the  guilty.  .  .  .  One  of  the  nationalist  newspapers  published 
the  following:  'Receipt  to  make  a  Rebel.  Take  a  loyal  subject,  un- 
influenced by  title,  place,  or  pension;  burn  his  house  over  his  head; 
let  the  soldiery  exercise  every  species  of  insult  and  barbarity  towards 
his  helpless  family,  and  march  away  with  the  plunder  of  every  part 
of  his  I'jroperty  they  choose  to  save  from  the  flames.'"* 

Of  course,  the  rising,  insurrection,  rebellion, — or  by  whatever 
other  name  you  choose  to  designate  this  agonized  writhing  of  a 
nation's  frame  when  placed  on  the  red-hot  gridiron,  over  the  blazing 
fire, — occurred  just  as  the  Castle  officials  (shall  we  also  add  William 

*  "  Kingdom  of  Ireland,"  ch.  xviii. 


490  Tlie  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Pitt  ?)  wanted  it  ?  Tliey  liad  been  sowing  Dragon's  teeth  most  in- 
dustriously and  skilfully:  was  it  a  wonder  that  from  the  laboring  soil 
sprang  up  armed — no!  not  armed,  but  maddened  men.  who  cared 
not  what  form  of  death  they  had  to  brave  or  to  inflict,  so  that  they 
had  revenge  on  their  oppressors  ? 

Let  us  weigh  all  these  things  well.  Is  it  not  time  that  Ireland's 
sufferings,  Ireland's  incredible  wrongs  should  be  weighed  in  the 
scales  of  calm,  impartial  Justice  ? 

Of  the  struggle  itself  of  1798,  it  were  worse  than  idle  to  give  a 
history.  There  was  and  could  be,  under  the  circumstances,  no  con- 
certed action.  The  Government  was  minutely  informed  of  all  the 
leaders'  plans;  and  they  sprang  the  mine  they  had  been  preparing 
exactly  when  it  suited  their  purpose  to  do  so. 

"The  risings  in  the  south  and  in  the  north,"  says  Mr.  AYalpolc, 
"were  very  different  in  character.  The  misguided  people  who  had 
proceeded  to  camp  out  at  Ballinahinch,  were  principally  respectable 
small  farmers,, and  artisans  and  clerks  from  the  neighboring  towns. 
They  were  all  dressed  in  their  Sunday  clothes,  and  appear  to  have 
conducted  themselves  very  respectably.  In  Meath,  Kiidare,  and 
Carlow  the  outbreak  at  once  assumed  a  religious  shape.  The  bands 
of  insuro-ents  were  largely  composed  of  the  lawless  Defenders,  who 
had  already  been  scouring  the  country  for  months;  and  these  were 
joined  by  the  disaffected  Roman  Catholics  in  the  town  and  surround- 
ing country.  The  Orange  Yeomanry  Corps  liad  been  at  free  quarters 
in  all  the  villages  for  weeks;  and  Orangeman  and  Protestant .  .  .  we?'e 
convertible  terms.  Accordingly,  during  the  six  or  seven  days  during 
which  these  districts  were  at  the  mercy  of  the  rebels,  the  harmless 
Protestant  inhabitants  who  dwelt  therein  were  set  upon,  and  num- 
bers of  them  were  murdered.  It  is,  however,  noticeable  that  neither 
in  this  part  of  the  country  nor  in  Wexford,  where  the  rising  was 
really  of  a  formidable  character,  were  the  insurgents  guilty  of  the 
crime  of  rape  in  addition  to  the  crime  of  homicide.  .  .  . 

"Wexford  was  the  last  county  which  was  converted  by  the  United 
Irishmen.     Its  population  was  one  of  the  most  industrious  and  con- 


How   Wexford  was  "dragooned"  into  Rebellion.  491 

tented  in  Ireland.  The  reports  coming  from  the  neighboring  coun- 
ties of  the  cruelties  of  the  Orange  Yeomanry,  and  the  sight  of  batches 
of  men  condemned  untried  to  transportation,  passing  daily  through 
the  country  to  Duncannon  Fort,  created  a  spirit  of  disaffection.  .  .  . 

"At  length  the  dragooning  came  home  to  the  people  themselves. 
Wexford  was  ]iroclaimed.  The  Xorth  Cork  militia  were  quartered  in 
the  principal  towns,  and  the  whole  country  was  delivered  over  to  the 
Yeomanry.  Eoss,  Gorey,  Carnew,  Enniscorthy,  became  the  head- 
quarters of  Lynch-lavv.  The  magistrates  ordered  the  seizure,  im- 
prisonment, and  flogging  of  persons  suspected  of  possessing  arms. 
Houses  were  burnt,  'croppies'  were  pitch-capped,  and  peasants  were 
shot  on  the  roads,  or  at  work  in  the  fields.  So  great  was  the  terror 
of  the  country  folk,  and  so  general  the  belief  that  the  Orangemen 
were  bent  on  their  extermination,  that  they  forsook  their  homes  in 
the  night,  and  slept  in  the  ditches." 

And  all  this  in  a  county  where  not  a  single  act  of  disturbance  had 
occurred,  and  in  which  not  a  single  branch  of  the  Society  of  United 
Irishmen  had  been  established!  Shall  we  be  surprised  to  see  presently 
the  Priests  rise  with  their  persecuted  flocks  and  turn  boldly  on  the 
wolves  bent  on  exterminating  them  ? 

But  one  or  two  instances  will  enlighten  the  reader  about  those 
methods  used  to  drive  the  people  into  rebellion,  to  madden  them 
rather,  and  fill  them  with  a  blind  and  reckless  fury. 

"Anthony  Perry — who  was  afterwards  one  of  the  chief  among  the 
rebel  leaders,  and  hanged  at  Edenderry  in  the  Kings  County, — was  a 
Protestant  gentleman  of  property,  and  having  listened  to  the  United 
Irish,  had  been  thrown  into  prison  at  Gorey  on  suspicion.  He  soems 
to  have  repented  his  misconduct,  and  to  have  given  the  Government 
valuable  information,  but  was  treated  in  prison  with  the  utmost  bru- 
tality. Among  other  acts  of  severity,  a  sergeant  of  the  North  Cork 
militia — nicknamed,  from  his  inventive  cruelty,  'Tom-the-Devil,' — 
cut  away  all  his  hair  quite  close  to  the  head,  and  having  rubbed 
gunpowder  well  into  the  stubble,  burned  out  all  the  roots  of  it  with 
a  candle.     Upon  being  let  out  of  gaol  on  the  eve  of  the  rising,  he 


493  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

found  the  Yeomanry  had  sacked  his  house;  and  burning  with  indig- 
nation, he  immediately  joined  the  rebels. 

"Joseph  Holt's  was  a  similar  case.  He  was  a  respectable  farmer  in 
South  Wicklow.  ...  He  took  no  interest  in  politics  and  had  no  con- 
nection with  the  United  Irishmen.  He  had,  however,  given  offence 
to  a  neighbor  by  pressing  him  for  a  debt;  and  this  person  out  of  spite 
gave  information  to  a  company  of  the  Fermanagh  militia.  .  .  .  Holt, 
on  coming  back  from  his  day's  work,  found  his  house  a  smoking  ruin, 
his  eifects  pillaged,  and  his  wife  and  family  turned  into  the  ditch. 
He  himself  fled  for  his  life  into  the  Wicklow  mountains,  and  in  the 
outbreak  which  shortly  followed,  became  the  desperate  leader  of  a 
band  of  insurgents." 

The  Father  John  Murphy,  who  commanded  the  principal  body 
of  insurgents  at  Vinegar  Hill,  had  seen  his  parishioners  subjected  to 
the  unnamable  atrocities  committed  by  the  Yeomanry;  he  had  seen 
his  own  house  with  his  church  burned  by  these  fiends  incarnate,  and 
had  cast  his  lot  .with  his  people,  driven  out  of  house  and  home,  and 
threatened  with  extermination.  It  probably  never  was  his  intention 
to  fire  a  shot  or  lift  a  violent  hand  against  living  being.  But  insur- 
rections are  like  swollen  streams  in  spring-tide  and  carry  along 
both  the  man  who  swims  with  the  current  and  the  man  who  re- 
sists it. 

The  presence  of  the  Priests  in  this  rising  to  which  the  poor  people 
were  driven  by  systematic  provocation  and  the  cruelties  above  de- 
scribed, would  have  been  a  restraint  upon  the  maddened  masses  in 
their  lieadlong  rage.  They  were,  happily  or  unhappily,  too  few  to 
control  the  rude,  wild  elements  set  in  motion  by  Fitzgibbon  and  his 
associates. 

And  how  the  Government  Avith  its  army,  yeomanry,  and  militia, — 
and  with  the  mock-justice  of  its  courts-martial  and  its  State  Trials, 
— did  stamp  out  the  fire  it  had  so  industriously  kindled  all  over  the 
land ! 

"The  brutality  of  the  militia  and  yeomanry  had  been  bad  enough 
before  the  outbreak:  now  that  the  rising  was  crushed,  their  ferocity 


Cornwallis  Speaks.  493 

knew  no  bounds.  .  .  .  When  tlie  rebels  fled  from  Vinegar  Hill,  their 
hospital  at  Enniscorthy  was  burnt,  and  the  wounded  shot  as  they  lay 
there  in  their  beds.  The  same  scene  was  repeated  at  Wexford.  The 
soldiers,  especially  a  regiment  of  imported  Hessians,  scoured  the  coun- 
try, shooting  all  whom  they  came  across,  outraging  women,  destroying 
the  Koman  Catholic  chapels,  and  completing  the  general  desolation 
by  plundering  and  burning  the  remaining  homesteads.  Loyalist  and 
rebel  suffered  alike  indiscriminately,  without  even  the  benefit  of  a 
court-martial.  There  was  no  stay  to  inquire  whether  the  victim  were 
friend  or  foe.  .  .  .  The  local  magistrates  who  had  fled  before  the 
storm,  returned  to  resume  the  old  coercive  system,  and  to  wreak  their 
vengeance  upon  the  inhabitants." 

The  atrocities  committed  by  General  Lake  and  his  myrmidons 
had  served  the  purpose  of  the  Castle  officials  and  fulfilled  to  the 
highest  the  wishes  of  the  Orange  faction.  As  public  feeling  began 
to  cool  down  in  England,  and  the  doings  of  the  army  and  the  volun- 
teers began  to  be  read  calmly,  all  these  indiscriminate  massacres  of 
defenceless  prisoners  and  unoffending  peasants  provoked  a  reaction 
in  public  opinion.  Lake  was  superseded  by  Lord  Cornwallis  of 
American  fame.  He  was,  like  Abercromby,  a  brave  and  upright 
soldier,  who  abhorred  cruelty  as  he  detested  duplicity.  "On  his 
arrival  at  the  Castle  he  was  shocked  at  the  saiiguinary  spirit  with 
which  he  found  the  Ascendancy  imbued.  'The  principal  persons 
of  this  country,'  he  writes,  '^and  the  members  of  both  Houses  of 
Parliament  are,  in  general,  averse  to  all  acts  of  clemency,  .  .  .  and 
would  pursue  measures  that  could  only  terminate  in  the  extermi- 
nation of  the  greater  number  of  the  inhabitants,  and  in  the  utter 
destruction  of  the  country.  The  words  Papists  and  Priests  are  for 
ever  in  their  mouths,  and  by  their  unaccountable  policy  would  drive 
four-fifths  of  the  community  into  irreconcilable  rebellion.'" 

Yes — to  'drive  four-fifths  of  the  community  into  rebellion,' and 
then  to  'pursue  measures  that  could  only  end  in  the  extermination 
of  the  greater  number  of  the  inhabitants ' — such  is,  as  the  nineteenth 
century  is  about  to  dawn  on  the  world,  the  policy  in  favor  at  Dublin 


494  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Castle,  witli  the  Protestant  Ascendancy,  with  the  Irish  Landlords 
who  sit  in  both  Houses  of  Parliament  in  College  Green. 

"In  speaking  of  the  reckless  refusal  of  quarter  by  the  troops, 
Lord  Cornwallis  says,  '  I  am  sure  that  a  very  small  portion  of  them 
(the  rebels)  only  could  be  killed  in  battle,  and  I  am  much  afraid  that 
any  man  with  a  brown  coat  who  is  found  within  several  miles  of  the 
field  of  action  is  butchered  without  discrimination.'    And  on  July  24th 
he  writes  to  General  Eoss:  'The  whole  country  is  in  such  a  state  that 
I  feel  frightened  and  ashamed  whenever  I  consider  that  I  am  looked 
upon  as  being  the  head  of  it.    Except  in  the  instances  of  the  six  State 
trials  that  are  going  on  here,  there  is  no  law  either  in  town  or  country 
but  martial  law;  and  you  know  enough  of  that  to  see  all  the  horrors 
of  it,  even  in  the  best  administration  of  it.    Judge,  then,  how  it  must 
be  conducted  by  Irishmen  heated  with  passion  and  revenge.     But  all 
this  is  trifling  compared  to  the  numberless  murders  committed  by  our 
people  without  any  process  of  examination  whatever.     The  yeomanry 
are  in  the  style  of  the  loyalists  in  America,  only  much  more  numerous 
and  powerful,  and  a  thousand  times  more  ferocious.    These  men  have 
saved  the  countrv,  but  they  now  take  the  lead  in  rapine  and  murder. 
The  Irish  militia  with  few  ofRcers,  and  those  generally  of  the  worst 
kind,  follow  closely  on  tlie  heels  of  the  yeomanry  in  murder  and  every 
kind  of  atrocity.  .  .  .     The  feeble  outrages,  burnings,  and  murders, 
which  are  still  committed  by  the  rebels,  serve  to  keep  up  the  sangui- 
nary disposition  on  our  side.  .  .  .    The  conversation  of  the  principal 
persons  of  the  country  all  tends  to  encourage  the  system  of  blood ;  and 
the  conversation  even  at  my  table,  where  you  will  suppose  I  do  all  I 
can  to  prevent  it,  always  turns  on  hanging,  shooting,  buiniing,  «&c.; 
and  if  a  priest  has  been  put  to  death  the  greatest  joy  is  expressed  by 
the  whole  company.     So  much  for  Ireland,  and  my  wretched  situa- 
tion.'" 

Here  we  rest  our  case,  leaving  the  verdict  to  the  indignation  of 
mankind. 


THE    CONCLUSION. 

rr^O  England,  to  her  Parliament,  and  her  People,  I  now  address 
myself  in  presence  of  the  civilized  woi'ld. 

Your  conscience,  your  honor,  your  interests  alike  demand  that 
you  should  take  in  hand  promptly  and  unhesitatingly  the  reparation 
of  the  enormous  and  manifold  injustice  which  both  the  Parliament 
and  the  People  of  England  in  the  past  committed  toward  the  sister 
island. 

Conscience,  honor,  and  interest  are  concerned  in  making  of 
Ireland 

A  Field  of  Profitable  and  Contented  Labor  for  Irislimen. 

For  seven  hundred  years  Englishmen  have,  in  one  way  or  another, 
impoverished  and  ruined  Ireland.  ^Phey  have  destroyed  the  stately 
forests  which  once  covered  the  island.  They  have  ravaged  it  repeat- 
edly with  fire  and  sword  in  its  length  and  breadth.  They  have  again 
and  again  depopulated  it  by  exterminating  man  and  beast.  They 
have  impoverished  the  soil  by  allowing  its  plough-lands  to  remaiii  for 
long  periods  uncultivated  and  uncared  for.  They  have  neglected,  in 
violation  of  all  the  laws  of  intelligent  husbandry,  to  restore  fertility 
to  the  exhausted  soil,  to  reclaim  the  waste  lands,  to  maintain  or  in- 
crease the  productiveness  of  the  most  fertile  districts.  Century  after 
century,  the  landlords  to  whom  the  arbitrary  decrees  of  the  British 
Parliament  gave  the  inheritance  of  the  Celt  and  Anglo-Irish  Catholic, 
have  treated  Ireland  as  the  South-Sea  islander  does  the  fruit  trees 
near  his  door, — cut  them  down  to  get  at  their  fruit. 

(495) 


49 C  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

The  Irish  landlords  have  rack-rented  their  poor  tenants-at-will, 
year  after  year,  without  caring  or  inquiring  whether  the  harvest  was 
bountiful  or  scarce,  or  whether  there  was  a  harvest  at  all;  whether 
the  natural  fertility  of  their  lands  was  increased  or  destroyed  by  the 
methods  of  culture  employed;  whether  the  farmer  fared  well  or  ill,  or 
whether  he  and  his  farm-laborers  with  their  families  were  housed  like 
the  savage,  or  left  to  starve  in  the  winter. 

And  so  the  land  deteriorated  with  each  successive  year;  and  so  the 
tillers  of  the  soil,  generation  after  generation,  suffered  from  extreme 
poverty,  physical  and  mental  degeneracy.  But  of  all  that  the  land- 
lords recked  not,  provided  their  rents  were  paid  up  to  the  last 
farthing. 

It  behoves  you  now,  at  length,  to  make  the  land  fruitful  for  the 
laborers;  to  give  them  an  interest  in  it;  to  make  them,  on  the  soil 
on  which  they  were  born  and  grew  up,  something  better  than  the 
weeds  which  are  torn  up  by  the  roots  in  autumn  and  cast  over  the 
stile  on  the  roadside. 

Encourage  them  to  look  upon  it  as  in  some  way  their  own,  to  cul- 
tivate it  with  love;  to  bestow  their  labor  and  their  gains  in  making  it 
fruitful,  in  beautifying  it,  in  creating  on  it  civilized  and  happy 
homes. 

God  knows  they  have  sowed  in  tears  long  enough  on  the  land  of 
their  birth,  to  be  rewarded  by  reaping  in  joy  ! 

Little  or  nothing  has  been  done,  up  to  this  Year  of  Grace  1885,  to 
make  this  dear  old  land  of  Ireland  really  fruitful,— to  make  it  a 
profitable  field  of  labor  for  the  millions  who  call  it  their  native  land, 
—to  make  them  contented  to  spend  their  lives  in  cultivating  it  and 
developing  its  manifold  resources. 

NoTiiiN-G,  in  very  truth,  had  been  done  until  the  Land-Law  of 
1870  came  to  inspire  the  Irish  farmers  with  a  beginning  of  hope.  It 
effected  but  little  good,  however,  besides  exciting  hopes  in  the  hearts 
of  the  despairing  masses. 

What  good  has  the  Land-Law  of  1881  achieved  ?  It  is  sad  to  have 
to  answer:  Little  or  nothing. 


Reconstruct  the  Land  Courts.  497 

In  itself,  as  well  as  in  the  designs  of  its  author,  a  magnificent  boon 
far  surpassing  in  importance  anytliing  ever  bestowed  on  Ireland  by 
an  English  Parliament, — it  would  have  been  hailed  with  rapture  and 
gratitude  by  the  Irish  people,  had  it  not  been  heralded  by  the  most 
odious  Coercion  Act  known  in  the  dark  annals  of  Irish  misery.  Be- 
fore-insulting the  nation  with  this  atrocious  Crimes'  Act,  the  impul- 
sive Prime  Minister  did  not  stop  to  ask  the  Irish  Bishops  and  the 
political  leaders  of  Ireland,  whether  or  not  the  horrible  crimes  com- 
mitted in  Dublin  or  elsewhere  were  the  legitimate  offspring  of  the 
teaching  of  the  former  or  of  the  principles  of  the  latter.  Both  pre- 
lates, priests,  and  politicians  would  have  answered,  that  these  deeds 
of  blood  were  only  the  natural  consequences  of  a  hatred  and  a  despair 
begotten  by  an  oppression  to  which  there  had  been,  so  far,  no 
let-up. 

The  men  to  whom  was  committed  the  practical  carrying  out  of 
that. act,  were  almost  to  a  man  taken  from  the  landlord  class  and 
imbued  with  all  the  passions  and  prejudices  of  that  class.  Besides, 
in  an  evil  hour,  the  enemies  of  the  Irish  tenantry  managed  to  tack 
on  to  the  land  act  valuation  clauses,  which  they  knew — a]Kl  they 
boasted  of  it — would  enable  the  land  commissioners  and  their  courts 
to  neutralize  all  the  beneficent  purposes  of  the  legislator. 

The  Irish  people  to  v.-liom  tliis  Land  Act  was  given  together  with 
the  Crimes'  Act, — just  as  you  kick  a  famished  dog  while  throwing 
him  a  bone, — had  too  keen  a  sense  of  self-respect  to  tliank  Mr. 
Gladstone  then.  Four  years  have  elapsed,  and  they  have  discovered 
to  their  intense  disappointment  that,  thanks  to  the  Land  Courts,  the 
Act  of  1881,  which  was  destined  to  create  a  peasant-proprietary  class 
in  Ireland,  was  like  the  fair  fruits  which  grow  on  the  shores  of  the 
Dead  Sea,  nothing  but  ashes  and  bitterness  in  the  mouth. 

In  February,  1885,  there  are  formidable  symptoms  of  a  land- 
agitation  more  dangerous  than  that  of  1879-80. 

It  is  for  3"ou,  Ministers  and  Legislators  of  England,  to  see  to  it 
that  the  people  of  Ireland  shall  find  certain  and  secure  means  of  a 
livelihood  in  their  native  country. 
32 


498  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

The  Land-Law  of  1881  is  excellent.  Its  administration  is  de- 
testable. Place  in  the  land-courts  men  who  are  in  sympathy  with 
the  people;  men  of  incorruptible  integrity,  to  whose  conscience  no 
landlord  need  fear  to  leave  the  decision  of  his  just  claims;  men  who 
know  the  people  and  the  land,  and  who  will  judge  rightly,  because 
incapable  of  doing  otherwise. 

Let  your  legislation  declare,  that  where  the  toil  and  industry 
of  the  tenant  has  created  the  very  soil  he  tills  and  made  the  land 
fruitful, — he  must  be,  at  least  in  part,  its  owner;  that  where  the 
season  is  such  as  not  to  allow  the  harvest  to  ripen,  or  when  the 
crop  is  destroyed  by  blight, — the  landlord  shall  not  demand  from 
his  tenant  the  equivalent  of  the  lost  harvest  or.  crop. 

Compel  by  your  legislation  both  landlord  and  tenant  to  take  a 
like  and  a  joint  interest  in  increasing  the  productiveness  of  the  soil,  to 
build  substantial  and  comfortable  habitations  upon  it  for  all  who  till 
it.  A  wise  and  a  fatherly  Government  will  labor  to  establish  in  Ire- 
land what  exists  in  every  civilized  country  known  to  us,  a  friendly 
feeling  and  a  community  of  interest  between  landlord  and  tenant; 
between  the  farmer  and  his  laborers. 

Legislators  of  England,  remember  that  you  it  was,  who  created 
an  almost  impassable  gulf  of  hatred  in  Ireland  between  the  pro- 
prietors and  the  tillers  of  the  soil,  between  Protestant  and  Catholic. 
Do  you  ever  reflect  that  you  are  under  an  obligation  to  bridge  over 
that  gulf,  to  unite  in  kindly  feeling,  brotherly  love,  and  hearty  co- 
operation for  the  common  weal  the  classes  your  own  laws  liave  so 
long  divided  and  set  against  each  other  ?  Vain  are  all  your  Coercion 
and  Crimes'  Acts,  your  armies  of  Police  and  Detectives,  your  partisan 
judges  and  your  packed  juries,  to  stop  agrarian  crime  and  suppress 
Secret  Societies. 

Once  for  all,  regulate  the  relations  between  landlord  and  tenant; 
help  to  establish  between  them  the  ties  of  gratitude  and  respect  in 
the  latter  resulting  from  generous  liberality  in  the  former.  So  long 
as  we  hear  of  the  cruel  scenes  of  eviction  which  are  taking  place  on 
the  Arran  Islands,  on  Clare  and  Achill  Islands,  as  well  as  on  the 


Develop  the  Fisheries.  499 

mainland,  will  not  landlord  cruelty  beget  despair  in  the  evicted,  and 
drive  them  into  the  ranks  of  Secret  Organizations? 

Coerce  the  landlords,  and  protect  the  tenants  !  This  is  the  only 
potent  means  of  stopping  disorders  in  Ireland. 

It  is  time,  moreover,  that  landed  proprietors  should  understand 
that  the  altered  circumstances  of  international  traffic,  by  bringing  to 
their  doors  the  agricultural  produce  of  the  remotest  countries,  make 
it  difficult  for  European  farmers  to  hold  their  own  in  the  inevitable 
competition.  Eent  only  represents  the  productiveness  of  landed 
property.  When  the  market  value  of  produce  is  lowered,  rent  should 
go  down  with  it. 

It  is  monstrous  to  exact  from  the  Irish  tenant-farmer  the  high 
rent  for  which  he  bargained  when  he  made  his  fifteen  years'  pur- 
chase. Agricultural  values  have  all  changed  since  then,  why  hold 
the  tenant  to  the  terms  of  a  contract  which  these  fluctuations  have 
rendered  it  impossible  for  him  to  keep. 

You  profess  to  be  desirous  of  promoting  the  interests  of  the 
farmer  class,  because  on  their  prosperity,  in  a  country  where  agri- 
culture is  the  only  industry  left  for  tlie  laboring  masses,  depend  both 
the  general  prosperity  and  the  peace  of  the  community.  Show  by 
your  deeds  that  you  will  not  have  these  interests  sacrificed. 

Protect  the  tenant-farmers,  then,  as  well  as  the  farm-laborers. 

Once  more  I  say — protect  also  your  fishermen;  and  be  both  prompt 
and  liberal  in  developing  the  Fisheries  of  Ireland.  To  us  Americans, 
to  travelers  from  the  Continent,  it  is  a  strange,  an  inconceivable  folly, 
that  the  teeming  seas  which  bathe  Ireland  on  every  side,  should  be  to 
Irishmen,  as  were  the  gold  fields  of  California  or  the  diamond  fields 
of  South  Africa,  before  the  coming  of  white  men, — mines  of  exhaust- 
less  wealth,  but  by  the  Savage  Tribes  unappreciated,  by  you,  the 
Kulers  of  Ireland,  neglected. 

This  neglect  was  both  foolish  and  criminal.  It  is  so  at  this 
moment. 

Are  English  Statesmen,  so  keen  to  protect  British  interests  in 
Afghanistan,  and   China,  and   Egypt,  and   Zululand,   blind  to  the 


500  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

necessity  of  making  the  beautiful  island,  lying  at  their  very  doors, 
and  forming,  as  they  say,  an  essential  part  of  the  Empire,  a  mine 
of  wealth  to  its  own  inhabitants,  and  a  credit  to  its  rulers?  Is  the 
development  of  the  Irish  Fisheries,  not  a  British  interest  ? 

Are  not  the  Ministers  of  England  touched  by  no  sense  of  shame 
or  remorse,  when  they  see  what  splendid  results  the  munificence  of 
Baroness  Burdett-Coutts  has  produced  in  the  fisheries  of  Baltimore 
and  the  Cape-Clear  Islands?  Can  they  not  learn  from  the  prosperity 
and  independence  which  one  noble-hearted  woman  has  diffused 
among  a  population  apparently  doomed  to  hopeless  poverty,  and  by 
the  magnificent  demonstrations  of  that  people's  gratitude, — that  the 
wealth  of  love  in  the  Irish  heart  is  deeper  and  more  exhaustless  than 
the  ocean  beyond  their  shores,  and  that  they  only  wait  for  the  help- 
ing hand  of  a  liberal  Government,  to  be  up  and  outstripping  their 
neighbors  in  the  race  of  intelligence  and  industry  ? 

Can  England  afford  for  ever  to  neglect  or  despise  these  priceless 
and  now  most  needful  treasures  of  Irish  love  and  devotion  ?  Can  she 
afford  to  allow  all  the  untold  resources  of  Irish  intelligence,  ability, 
and  heroic  courage,  to  be  like  the  seas  on  her  coast  only  sources  of 
danger  in  storm  and  wrath. 

I  hear  of  Government  grants  for  piers  and  harbors  of  refuge 
dealt  out  with  a  niggardly  hand  here  and  there.  AVhat  would  not  a 
single  million  generously  spent,  not  only  in  such  constructions  at  the 
most  important  points  on  the  coast,  but  in  loans  granted  to  the 
fishermen  to  enable  them  to  purchase  and  equip  suitable  craft 
for  deep-sea  fishing, — do  to  rouse  the  energies  of  a  down-trodden 
population  ? 

In  the  Cromwellian  Plantation  of  Connaught,  your  English 
Parliament  decreed  to  surround  that  Province  all  along  its  sea-board 
with  a  military  colony  several  miles  in  depth.  The  irrepressible 
Celt,  like  the  tide,  overflowed  all  the  unnatural  obstacles  you  op- 
posed to  their  expansion. 

Believe  me — it  were  a  wise  political  economy  to  create  all  around 
the  coasts  of  Ireland  miles  deep  of  happy  fishermen's  and  cottiers' 


Resuscitate  Industry  and  Trade.  501 

homes.  Do  you  not  need  more  and  more  every  day  a  population  of 
sucli  sea-faring  men  as  all  London  and  all  England  admired  in  the 
Irish  Fishermen  at  the  late  Exhibition. 

Develop  your  Fisheries,  then  ! 

And  make  haste  to  resuscitate  Irish  Industries  and  Trade.  If 
Ireland  be — as  Englishmen  say — an  essential  part  of  the  Imperial 
PoAver  made  up  of  the  Three  Kingdoms, — then  have  as  tender  a  care 
for  the  industries  of  Cork  and  Dublin  and  Belfast  and  Limerick,  as 
you  have  of  those  of  London  and  Bristol  and  Manchester  and  Leeds. 
Sliow  as  much  concern  for  the  harbors  of  the  Sister  Isle  as  you  have 
for  those  of  Liverpool  and  Cardiff  and  Glasgow. 

I  adjure  yon,  in  your  own  dearest  intei*est, — delay  not  longer  to 
jirovide  for  all  Irishmen  profitable  labor.  Ireland  counted  more  than 
five  millions  within  her  borders  ten  years  ago:  how  happens  it  that 
she  has  less  than  five  millions  in  1885? 

Has  the  land  devoured  its  inhabitants?  No!  They  starved  in 
it,  or  fled  from  it  because  there  was  in  it  neither  labor  nor  food 
for  man. 

To  what  purpose  do  you  establish  your  system  of  National  Schools, 
your  Boards  of  Intermediate  Education,  your  Royal  University  with 
its  central  schools  throughout  the  island?  What  do  you  intend  to 
do  with  your  Scientific  College  here  in  Dublin,  and  your  University 
degrees  for  Civil  Engineering?  Where  are  these  swarms  of  bright, 
intelligent,  thoroughly  educated  boys  and  youths  to  find  a  field  of 
labor  for  their  acquired  knowledge  here  in  Ireland? 

I  can  understand  and  admire  in  Paris  the  great  Central  School 
of  Arts  and  Trades  [Arts  et  Metiers),  and  the  thoroughly  practical 
education  given  to  the  pupils  of  the  Polytechnic  School,  when  they 
leave  it  and  choose  each  his  own  profession.  France  neglects  no 
field  of  skilled  labor.  And,  after  all,  her  toilers  are  better  paid 
than  those  of  England,  better  even  than  ours  in  America. 

Where  are  their  fields  for  skilled  labor  in  Ireland?  And  how 
long  is  this  going  to  be  as  it  is  ?  How  long  will  you  continue  to  force 
3'our  hundreds  of  thousands  of  Irishmen  to  fly  from  the  dear  land 


502  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

of  their  fathers, — and  to  increase  that  awful  host  of  England's 
irreconcilable  foes,  which  is  ever  growing,  growing,  growing  be- 
yond the  Atlantic,  like  a  storm-cloud  black  and  big  with  the  fate 
of  England? 

These  words  are  not  addressed  to  you  in  hatred;  but  in  exhorta- 
tion made  intense  by  the  forecast  of  mighty  perils  to  which  English- 
men are  wilfully  blind,  and  by  the  memory  of  the  terrible  record  of 
wrong,  from  which  I  have  taken  a  few  pages  for  this  book. 

But  you  must  cease  to  govern  Ireland  as  you  have  doiie  hitherto. 

The  despotism  and  corruption  and  infamy  of  your  Dublin  Castle 
Rule,  are  a  disgrace  to  the  civilization  of  the  nineteenth  century,  a 
reproach  to  British  statesmanship  and  political  wisdom. 

Cease  to  misgovern  a  proud,  a  highly  sensitive,  and  highly  moral 
people  by  men  not  of  their  own  blood,  and  out  of  sympathy  with  the 
national  character,  feelings,  and  aspirations. 

Give  Ireland  back  her  Nationhood,  her  own  Constitution,  her 
Parliament  as  it  existed  Avhen  Grattan's  genius,  patriotism,  and  elo- 
quence shone  in  it  like  the  radiance  of  the  evening  star  after  sunset 
in  the  Avestern  sky.  Nothing  but  the  restoration  of  her  Nationhood 
to  Ireland  can  ever  satisfy  the  mighty  yearning  of  the  Irish  heart  at 
home,  or  appease  the  ardent  desires  of  the  millions  of  the  Irish  race 
abroad. 

"The  desire  of  national  freedom" — it  has  been  truly  and  elo- 
quently said — "and  the  hope  of  it  never  left  the  national  heart.  .  .  . 
It  is  always  there — a  vehement,  deep-seated,  wide-spread,  apparently 
indestructible  national  instinct,  underlying  every  agitation,  outliving 
every  concession,  flashing  in  the  eye,  flushing  in  the  cheek  of  most 
Irishmen  and  Avomen,  rich  and  poor,  educated  and  ignorant.  Cath- 
olic iind  Protestant,  of  Celtic  descent  and  of  Saxon  descent.  Popular 
speakers  know  well,  and  they  have  known  it  any  time  these  eiglity- 
five  years,  that  if  they  want  really  to  move  any  great  popular  audience 
in  Ireland,  they  can  only  do  so  by  striking  this  chord."  * 

*  John  George  MacCarty,  "A  Plea  for  the  Home  Government  of  Ireland,"  p.  28. 


Restore  Self- Government.  503 

This  restoration  of  Home  Rule  or  Self-Government  would  only 
be  an  act  of  justice,  a  tardy  reparation  of  one  of  the  greatest  wrongs 
ever  inflicted  by  one  people  on  another.  On  January  22,  1799,  in  the 
Irish  House  of  Commons, — a  purely  Protestant  House,  be  it  remem- 
bered,— in  the  first  discussion  as  to  the  "desirability  of  a  union,"  it 
was  moved  and  carried  by  a  majority  of  five  and  after  a  debate  of 
twenty-two  hours'  duration,  "that  the  undoubted  birthright  of  the 
people  of  Ireland,  a  resident  and  independent  legislature,  sliould  he 
maintained. ''"' 

Give  the  people  of  Ireland,  without  any  distinction  of  creed,  a 
chance  to  vote  this  very  year,  on  the  acceptance  of  this  proposition, 
and  nineteen-twentieths  of  her  population  will  be  for  the  affirmative. 

The  Union  was  consummated  by  a  commercial  transaction.  Be- 
sides the  offices,  preferments,  and  peerages  bestowed  on  the  members 
of  both  Houses  in  return  for  their  votes,  £1,260,000  were  paid  in 
bribes, — and  the  amount  added  to  the  Irish  national  debt !  One 
liundred  members  of  the  lower  house,  however,  were  faithful  to  their 
country;  no  bribe,  no  offer,  no  threat  availed  to  make  them  consent 
to  barter  away  the  birthright  of  their  peojile. 

It  is  time  to  restore  what  was  so  iniquitously  obtained. 

It  was  an  iniquitous  transaction  under  every  one  of  its  aspects; — 
the  compact  was  tainted  with  a  radical  vice,  which  rendered  it  totally 
and  for  ever  invalid.  The  Irish  peers  and  representatives  had  no 
powers  from  the  nation  by  which  they  could  sell  to  the  English 
Ministry  the  Constitution  of  their  country,  or  pronounce  a  decree 
annihilating  the  assembly  in  which  they  had  the  honor  to  sit. 

It  is  a  restoration  founded  on  reason.  In  our  day  the  tendency 
is  toward  self-government  by  the  people  and  for  the  people  in  all 
civilized  countries.  England  herself  is  the  first  to  encourage  this 
tendency,  not  only  among  peoples  of  different  race  in  all  parts  of  the 
world,  but  in  her  own  colonies  and  dependencies.  She  has  treated 
French  Canada  with  a  wise  liberality,  respecting  for  one  hundred  and 
thirty  years  the  compact  formed  with  the  colony  on  its  cession  by 
France.     Eeligion,  language,  laws,  and  customs, — all   liave  been  sa- 


504  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

credly  left  untouched  by  the  hand  of  British  domination.  And  now 
the  Province  of  Quebec  is  among  tlie  brightest  gems  in  the  imperial 
diadem. 

How  different  has  been  England's  treatment  of  Ireland  !  The 
very  same  reign  which  witnessed  the  bestowing  on  French  and  Cath- 
olic Canada  the  boon  of  self-government,  beheld  the  suppression  of 
the  Irish  Parliament  and  Constitution.  Since  the  nineteenth  century 
began,  England  for  once  only  thought  it  necessary  to  rule  Lower 
Canada  by  a  Coercion  Bill.  It  was  only  a  temporary  suspension  of 
the  common  law,  and  was  succeeded  by  a  larger  and  more  desirable 
measure  of  self-government. 

How  is  it,  on  the  other  hand,  in  Ireland  ? 

"Interwoven  with  abortive  land  schemes  and  land  measures  was 
incessant  uninterrupted  coercive  legislation.  From  1796  to  1802  an 
Insurrection  Act  was  in  force,  and  from  1797  to  1802  the  Habeas 
Corpus  Act  was  suspended.  Insurrection  Acts  were  in  force  from 
1807  to  1810,  from  1814  to  1818,  from  1822  to  1825.  Habeas  Corpus 
was  again  suspended  1822  to  1823.  In  1829,  in  the  debate  on  Cath- 
olic Emancipation,  Sir  Eobert  Peel  was  able  to  say  that  '  for  scarcely 
a  year  during  the  period  that  has  elapsed  since  the  Union,  has  Ireland 
been  governed  by  the  ordinary  course  of  law.'  From  the  date  of  that 
utterance  to  the  present  day  the  country  has  not  been  governed  by 
the  ordinary  law  for  scarcely  a  single  year.  Arms  Acts,  suspensions 
of  Habeas  Corpus,  changes  of  venue,  Peace  Preservation  Acts,  and 
coercive  measures  of  all  kinds,  succeed,  accompany,  and  overlap  each 
other  with  melancholy  persistence.  Koughly  speaking,  Ireland  from 
the  Union  to  1885  was  never  governed  by  the  ordinary  lauh  The 
Union,  according  to  its  advocates,  was  to  be  the  bond  of  lasting  peace 
and  affection  between  the  two  countries;  it  was  followed  by  eighty-five 
years  of  coercive  legislation.  It  was  grimly  fitting  that  the  Union 
so  unlawfully  accomplished,  could  only  be  sustained  by  the  complete 
abandonment  of  all  ordinary  processes  of  law  thereafter."  * 

*  J.  H.  McCarthy. 


Home  Rule  must  be  Granted.  505 

As  these  lines  are  penned  the  British  Parhament  has  assembled, 
under  the  double  cloud  of  disaster  in  the  Soudan,  and  '  Dynamite 
outrages'  at  home,  Irish  discontent  continuing  unabated,  and  the  just 
demands  of  the  nation  remaining  unsatisfied.  The  Ministry  have  it 
in  contemplation  to  renew  the  Coercion  Act  in  force  these  last  four 
years.  .  .  .     How  long  is  this  to  last? 

Let  common  sense  as  well  as  common  justice  prevail  over  the 
perverse  counsels  of  the  "Conservative  Minority"  in  Ireland,  and 
the  prejudices  of  public  ophiion  in  England. 

Common  sense,  in  matters  pertaining  to  politics  and  to  govern- 
ment, demands  that  "the  rights  and  advantages  of  one  mass  of 
population,  their  prosperity,  industry,  Avell-being,  property,  national 
benefits  of  soil,  situation,  and  cHmato,  tlieir  manners,  language,  re- 
ligion, nationality  in  spirit  or  prejudice,"  should  not  be  "set  aside 
and  sacrificed  to  those  of  another  mass,"  Avhen  both  have  to  live 
together  side  by  side,  bound  to  each  other  by  one  political  tie.  "The 
principle  of  Federalism  (or  Home  Rule,  or  self-government  under  a 
distinct  national  constitution  as  in  1782)  seems  a  more  natural  and 
just  principle  of  general  government,  theoretically  considered,  than 
this  forced  ceiitralization.  .  .  .  The  peculiar  internal  welfare  of  each 
part  according  to  its  own  peculiar  internal  circumstances,  physical 
and  moral,  ...  is  in  its  own  keeping,  in  its  own  internal  legislative 
and  administrative  powers.  .  .  .  Nature  forbids  by  the  unalterable 
differences  of  soil,  climate,  situation,  and  natural  advantages,  or  by 
the  equally  unalterable  moral  differences  between  people  and  people, 
that  one  government  can  equally  serve  all,  be  equally  suited  to  pro- 
mote the  good  of  all."* 

Certain  it  is  that  all  attempts  to  govern  Ireland  from  London, 
or  to  have  an  English  Parliament  make  laws  for  a  people  whom  the 
Legislators  do  not  know,  utterly  misunderstand,  and  persist  in  misun- 
derstanding, have  proved  disastrous  failures, — disastrous  to  unhappy 
Ireland,  disastrous  to  England,  and  most  disastrous  at  this  momen- 

*  Laing,  "  Notes  of  a  Traveller,"  pp.  25-27. 


506  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

tons  crisis  in  imperial  affairs,  when  a  union  of  affection  between  the 
two  countries  would  enable  the  British  Empire  to  triumph  over  every 
enemy  and  to  laugh  at  all  difficulties. 

Why  not  give  to  Ireland,  what  is  only  the  birthright  of  all  Irish- 
men, SELF-GOVERNMENT,  what  slie  grants  to  the  smallest  and  most 
remote  of  her  colonies?  Why  does  she  refuse  to  Ireland  what  she 
grants  to  the  Isle  of  Man,  and  to  the  Channel  Islands,  Jersey  and 
Guernsey?  Is  it  because  the  Irish  are  Celts?  But  so  are  the  Manx, 
and  so  are  the  inhabitants  of  the  Channel  Islands?  Or  is  it  because, 
if  an  Irish  Parliament  were  to  sit  once  more  in  College  Green,  the 
majority  of  the  Lower  House  would  be  Catholics, — whereas  in  the 
little  islands  mentioned  they  are  Protestants  ?  Will  England  consent 
to  declare  before  tlie  civilized  world  that  Ireland  can  never  be  self- 
governed  because  the  majority  of  her  children  are  Catholics?  and 
that  jealousy  or  fear  of  a  hostile  religion,  the  religion  of  the  majority 
of  Christendom,  prevents  the  accomplishment  of  a  wise,  political,  and 
imperative  act  of  justice  and  reparation? 

It  must  be  done. 

Before  the  ill-omened  Union  of  both  countries  was  effected, 
Grattan  warned  the  English  Prime  Minister  that  in  taking  away  from 
Ireland  her  own  parliament,  he  Avas  "pulling  down  one  of  the  pillars 
of  the  British  Empire."  That  Empire  has  grown  so  unwieldy  that  it 
needs  to  be  propped  up  solidly.  It  cannot  afford,  at  the  very  moment 
when  Kussia  is  entering  Afghanistan,  and  knocking  at  the  gates  of 
India,  when  England's  military  prestige  has  been  lost  at  both 
extremities  of  the  African  Continent,  Avhen  Italy  is  profiting  by  Eng- 
land's weakness  and  isolation  to  effect  a  landing  on  the  Abyssinian 
coast,  and  when  both  Germany  and  France  are  warily  watching  the 
blunders  of  British  policy  and  strategy  in  Egypt, — to  have  Ireland 
like  a  paralyzed  limb  to  be  dragged  forward  helplessly,  instead  of 
having  it  in  a  sound,  healthy  condition  to  help  the  body  politic 
in  prompt,  energetic,  united  effort. 

It  is  for  Englishmen  supremely  impolitic  and  supremely  unwise  to 
put  forward  as  a  reason  for  not  restoring  to  Ireland  her  legislative 


SIR  CHARLES   GALVIN  DUFFY. 


Englishmen  plead  for  Home  Rule.  507 

independence,  tlie  pretence  that  Irishmen  are  unpractical,  and  in- 
capable of  governing  themselves. 

It  is  supremely  impolitic;  because  England's  need  of  Irish  brains, 
of  Irish  dash,  of  Irish  bone  and  sinew,  is  supreme  at  this  moment, 
if  ever.  You  need  an  Irish  Dufferin  in  India,  as  you  needed  him 
badly  in  St.  Petersburg,  and  Constantinople,  and  Canada,  just  as  you 
needed  an  Irish  Gough  a  few  years  ago;  you  needed  an  Irish  Gordon 
in  the  Soudan,  and  he  would  have  saved  your  honor  and  increased 
your  prestige,  if  your  bungling  had  not  sacrificed  him.  Now  your 
Irish  Wolseley,  who  has  saved  that  prestige  in  both  hemispheres,  runs 
the  risk  of  falling,  like  his  companion  in  arms,  the  Irish  Herbert 
Stewart,  a  victim  to  the  same  administrative  stupidity  which  persists 
in  controlling  the  war  in  the  Egyptian  deserts  from  Westminster  or 
JJowning  Street.  All  tlie  world  knows  that  you  are  as  ignorant  in  re- 
gard to^Ireland,  her  people,  her  wants,  and  her  resources,  as  yon  are 
about  the  Mahdi,  and  his  brave  Arab  tribes,  and  the  vast  country 
which  is  their  home,  and  where  you  have  no  business. 

Sir  George  Grey,  no  bad  judge  of  men,  says  that  the  Irish  people 
"possess  the  faculties  of  legislation  and  administration  in  an  equal 
degree  with  any  other  nation  on  earth." 

"Irislimen,"  says  the  London  'Spectator,'  "have  shown  an  ap- 
titude for  government  of  the  hard,  personal,  practical  kind.  .  ,  , 
AVliether  D'Arcy  McGee,  or  General  Sheridan,  or  Mr,  Duffy,  the 
Irishman  abroad  is  a  stern,  clear  man  ,  ,  ,  ,  inventive,  resourceful, 
far-seeing,  and  brave.  ,  .  .  An  Irish  civil  service  composed  of  such 
men,  picked  for  the  work,  trained  for  it,  and  encouraged  to  be  inde- 
pendent, would  govern  the  country  as  it  has  never  been  governed  yet, 
with  a  force,  a  directness,  and  honesty  which  in  a  few  years  would 
suppress  all  opposition,  and  make  the  law  what  it  has  become  under 
more  difficult  circumstances  in  India,  the  final  arbiter.  This,  we 
may  rely  on  it,  is  the  only  kind  of  government  which  suits  the 
national  genius,  and  the  only  one  which  in  Ireland  will  ever  reconcile 
freedom  with  order." 

Cease  to  revile  the  Irish  People. 


508  Tlie  Cause  of  Ireland. 

Eemember  how  miicli  you  have  done  to  debase  and  degrade  tlie 
Catholic  majority.  Even  now,  if  you  only  listen  attentively  to  the 
angry  complaints,  and  bigoted  expostulations  of  those  who  represent 
the  old  Protestant  Ascendancy,  you  will  discover  that  every  Parlia- 
mentary or  Administrative  measure  tendhig  to  treat  the  four  millions 
of  Irish  Catholics  with  justice  or  equity, — is  denounced  as  a  wrong 
done  to  the  minority. 

The  English  Parliament  is  only  beginning  to  vniderstand  that 
these  four  millions  of  Catholics,  whose  ancestors  were  so  long  kept  in 
enforced  ignorance  and  the  most  abject  poverty,  send  to  your  public 
examinations  of  every  grade,  a  host  of  children  of  both  sexes,  able  to 
compete  in  intelligence  with  the  youth  of  any  country  in  Christendom. 

The  official  yearly  Results  are  there  to  attest  this  magnificent 
aptitude  for  the  highest  knowledge,  and  for  success  in  every  public 
career. 

The  Irish  are  your  equals  in  the  gifts  of  mind. 

As  it  is  your  vital  interest  so  to  treat  Ireland  that  she  may  be  able 
and  willing  to  put  her  whole  strength  into  her  joint  action  with  you 
on  any  point  of  the  globe,  or  in  any  emergency,  so  must  3^ou  labor  to 
create  a  united  Ireland,  an  Ireland  in  which  all  the  vital  forces  of  the 
entire  people  can  be  used  for  all  high  and  holy  purposes. 

Cease,  then,  to  encourage  in  Ireland  the  divisions  and  antago- 
nisms which  have  been  her  bane  in  the  past  and  which  form  at  present 
the  great  obstacle  to  her  happiness  and  greatness.  You  have  dealt 
one  mortal  blow  at  the  tyrannical  Protestant  Ascendancy  of  old  by 
the  disestablishment  of  1869.  Do  not  encourage  the  Orange  faction 
to  take  this  Ascendancy,  every  now  and  then,  from  its  grave,  place  it 
on  its  old  war-horse,  like  the  dead  body  of  the  Cid  Carapeador,  and 
trot  it  out  to  frighten  men,  who  are  acquainted  with  the  fraud. 

The  Orange  faction  know  that  their  day  has  gone  by  for  ever. 
Their  Catholic  fellow-countrymen  are  ready  to  cast  aside  every  of- 
fensive weapon,  and  to  extend  to  them  the  right  hand  of  brotherly 
affection. 

It  is  not  from  the  Catholic  body,  no  matter  how  large  their  num- 


Cease  rejecting  Catholics  from  Office.  509 

bers  may  be,  or  how  overwlielming  the  majority  they  would  com- 
mand to-morrow  in  their  own  Parliament,  that  their  Protestant 
fellow-conntrymen  should  expect  intolerance,  opi)ression,  or  foul 
pla3^  All  the  national  antecedents,  as  recorded  in  history,  forbid  the 
entertaining  of  such  apprehension. 

Protestants  have  been,  in  every  struggle  for  national  liberties,  the 
boldest  and  most  eloquent  champions  of  Ireland.  They  are  so  still. 
And  they  know  how  little  their  co-religionists  have  to  fear  from  a 
Catholic   reaction. 

Irish  Catholics  have  suffered  wrong,  instead  of  inflicting  it. 
They  will  be  the  first  to  forgive,  and  to  forgive  generously.  The 
Protestants  have,  confessedly,  been  the  wrong-doers.  Are  they  going 
to  prove  the  truth  of  the  old  pagan  saying,  that  it  is  the  man  who 
has  injured  his  brother,  who  can  never  lay  aside  his  hate  ? 

Beneath  all  the  old  hard  crust  of  religious  and  political  bigotry, 
beneath  all  the  prejudices  of  birth  and  education, — there  still  beats 
a  warm,  generous  Irish  heart  in  the  Orangeman's  bosom.  It  is  there 
that  lies  the  hope  of  a  cordial  union  in  the  future. 

The  Government  still  appeals  to  this  antiquated  bigotry  and  these 
stupid  prejudices, — the  Castle  Government,  that  is. 

Respect  for  the  law  and  confidence  in  the  impartiality  and  integ- 
rity of  those  who  administer  it,  as  local  magistrates  and  justices  of  the 
peace, — are,  you  must  acknowledge,  essential  to  the  peace  and  well- 
ordering  of  a  community.  How  do  you  expect  Ireland  to  be  such  a 
community,  or  the  passions  which  separate  Catholic  from  Protestant 
to  be  appeased  and  die  out,  if  you  give  over  the  local  magistracy 
and  the  ordinary  administration  of  the  law,  to  men  from  whom 
Catholics  can  expect  neither  impartial it}^,  nor  integrity,  nor  any- 
thing like  justice? 

Of  the  thirty-two  lord-lieutenants  in  the  counties  of  Ireland,  only 
four  are  Catholics.  The  four  millions  of  Irish  Catholics  are  repre- 
sented in  the  ordinary  magistracy  by  869  of  their  co-religionists; 
whereas  the  one  million  of  Irish  Protestants  have  3,359  persons  of 
their  own  faith  in  the  Commission  of  the  Peace. 


510  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

This  glaring  disparity  becomes  still  more  hateful  to  a  people  so 
sensitive  to  injustice  as  the  Irish,  Avhen  one  examines  the  qualifica- 
tions which  served  as  a  recommendation  to  the  Viceroy  or  the  Lord 
Chancellor  in  the  persons  of  the  comparatively  few  Catholic  magis- 
trates. It  seems  downright  oppression  when  one  comes  to  look  into 
the  various  counties,  and  to  see  how  destitute  the  Catholic  populations 
are  left  of  all  protection  against  injustice  and  foul  play. 

The  same  unjust  inequality  reigns  in  every  single  public  depart- 
ment. The  majority  of  the  nation  are  absolutely  excluded  from  some, 
as  from  the  Post  Office,  and  cannot  be  said  to  be  at  all  represented  in 
others  far  more  important,  such  as  that  of  public  education. 

In  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  a  Protestant  University — Trinity  College 
■ — was  founded  in  Dublin  and  munificently  endowed,  then  and  at  sub- 
sequent periods,  out  of  the  confiscated  property  of  the  ancient  church. 
To  this  day  it  enjo^'s  a  princely  revenue.  Other  educational  estab-* 
lishments  all  over  the  land  were  likewise  endowed  with  bountiful 
revenues  by  the  .English  sovereigns,  a  few  of  them  bv  private  persons: 
all  from  out  revenues  derived  from  Irish  sources,  and  many  of  them 
for  avowed  proselytizing  purposes. 

Every  effort  made,  until  now,  to  obtain  even  a  University  Charter 
for  some  great  existing  Catholic  school,  or  the  establishment  of  a 
National  Catholic  University  has  signally  failed.  It  is  thought  suffi- 
cient to  permit  Catholic  schools  to  send  up  students  for  examination 
before  the  Intermediate  Board,  or  the  boards  of  the  Koyal  University. 
English  liberality  and  toleration  have  not  yet  been  able  to  muster 
courage  enough  to  found  and  endow  in  much-plundered  and  much- 
wronged  Ireland,  a  great  University  acceptable  to  the  religion  of  the 
majority  of  Irishmen  ! 

And  yet  you  have  done  it  in  Quebec, — at  least  you  have  granted 
an  imperial  charter  to  Laval  University,  founded  by  the  Seminary  of 
Quebec,  and  maintained  out  of  the  resources  bequeathed  to  the  latter 
by  Bishop  de  Laval-Montmorency. 

Just  as  these  pages  are  written  the  Government  allows  Convent 
and  Monastery  Schools,  with  their  accomplished  and  admirable  teach- 


Be  Pi-omptly  and  Generoudy  Just.  511 

ers,  to  receive  some  kind  of  due  recognition  and  remuneration  from 
the  public  treasury. 

All  these  concessions  come  grudgingly,  tardily,  and  by  dribblets. 
"Why  can  you  not  have  the  courage  of  being  promptl}-^  and  generously 
just? 

I'he  nations  of  the  civilized  world  among  whom  exiled  Irishmen 
and  their  descendants  have  lived  for  centuries,  bear  willing  testi- 
mony, not  only  to  their  varied  and  splendid  talents  displayed  in 
every  department  of  the  public  service,  but.  to  their  many  virtues 
manifested  in  every  walk  of  social  life.  They  have  noted  their 
proverbial  generosity  of  character,  their  keen  resentment  of  wrong 
and  that  surpassing  love  of  Justice  praised  long  ago  by  Sir  John 
Davies  and  Lord  Chief  Justice  Cole. 

I  repeat  it:  Be  generously  just  to  Ireland.  It  will  pay  you  well 
to  be  so,  though  even  at  the  eleventh  hour. 

And  be  just  before  you  are  generous.  Be  just  to  the  four  millions 
that  are  left  to  you, — the  remnants  and  representatives  of  the  un- 
counted millions,  destroyed  at  home  by  famine  and  the  sword,  or 
forced  by  your  blind  and  unnatural  policy  to  carry  their  talents,  their 
virtues,  and  their  resentment  to  every  quarter  of  the  globe.  There 
are,  at  this  moment,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  Irishmen,  within  the 
borders  of  their  native  country,  whom  the  proprietary  system  and 
the  land-legislation  imposed  upon  them  by  your  Protestant  Ascend- 
ancy, leave  on  the  very  verge  of  starvation.  They  are  but  too  willing 
to  work,  if  they  can  only  find  profitable  work  to  do. 

For  your  own  sake,  spend  in  ameliorating  their  condition,  and  in 
opening  up  the  sources  of  industry  which  lie  idle  and  locked  up  all 
around  them, — some  of  those  millions  you  are  pouring  like  snow- 
flakes  on  the  waters  of  the  Nile,  or  like  rain  on  the  sands  of  the 
Nubian  Desert.  Your  greed  and  your  folly  are  making  enemies  of 
the  whole  Mohammedan  world.  Make  friends,  before  it  is  too  late, 
of  the  Irish  at  your  own  doors. 

Make  haste  to  be  both  just  and  generous. 

There  may  be  yet  time  to  conciliate  the  Irish  at  home.     But 


512  The  Cause  of  Ireland. 

when  one  reads  sucli  speeches  as  tliat  just  delivered  in  the  Imperial 
Parliament  by  the  Scotch  Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland^  one  despairs 
almost  of  ever  seeing  an  English  Ministry  begin  to  learn  the  ABC 
of  Irish  politics.  In  presence  of  such  inconceivable  stolidity,  what 
can  Irishmen  think,  bnt  that  there  is  no  hope  for  the  pacification 
and  prosperity  of  their  country  save  in  self-government  ?  What  can 
they  do  but  look  to  themselves,  and  count  on  themselves  alone? 

No  ! — And  when  I  say  make  haste  to  he  just  to  Ireland, — it  is  to 
warn  you,  that  Irishmen  in  Ireland  shall  not  be  left  to  depend  on 
themselves  alone.  You  can  indeed  afford  to  laugh  at  the  "  Dynamite 
Conspirators"  in  Paris  or  in  London.  Those  in  ISTew  York  have  done 
you  no  harm.  Had  3^our  own  gold  subsidized  every  man  of  them, 
they  could  not  have  served  your  cause  better,  or  helped  more  effica- 
ciously to  dishearten  the  true  friends  of  Ireland  abroad  and  her  most 
devoted  servants  at  home. 

But  the  true  friends  of  Ireland  in  the  United  States  alone  are 
four  millions  at  least  of  Irish-born  citizens  or  of  citizens  of  Irish 
descent.  I  do  not  think  that  of  that  number  ten  thousand  sympa- 
thize with  or  approve  of  any  other  methods  of  obtaining  redress  for 
Ireland,  than  those  used  by  the  Irish  Parliamentary  Party  and  its 
trusted  leaders.  And  I  shall  go  further  and  tell  you,  that  with  the 
Parliamentary  Party  while  adliering  to  these  methods  in  the  cause 
of  Ireland,  every  true  man  in  tlie  United  States,  even  though  not  of 
Irish  blood,  is  most  heartily  in  sympathy. 

There  is  an  explosive  force  more  potent  than  any  devised  by  modern 
science, — that  of  public  opinion  indignant  at  the  criminal  unwilling- 
ness to  right  the  gigantic  wrongs  of  ages, — wrongs  such  as  no  people 
ever  groaned  under, — wrongs  which  still  remain  unredressed  and  prac- 
tically unheeded,  in  spite  of  the  oft-expressed  blame  of  Christendom. 

Eemember  how  often  it  has  been  said:  ''England's  extremity 
is  Ireland's  opportunity."  Must  it  be  also  the  opportunity  of  that 
Greater  Ireland  peopled  with  men  and  women  and  children  in  whose 
bosoms  rankles  the  remembrance  of  all  these  unparalleled  wrongs? 


APPENDIX     A, 


There  is  no  question  but  the  tribal  system  (that  of  Septs),  as  could  be  easily 
foreseen,  began  to  deteriorate  in  spite  of  all  the  influence  of  Keligion.  The 
great  chiefs  began  to  assume  all  the  airs  and  rights  of  kings,  and,  although 
there  was  a  continual  reaction  against  their  usurped  power,  this  seems  to  have 
gone  on  increasing.  The  rivalry  between  chief  and  chief  was  shared  by  their 
respective  Septs ;  and  in  their  forays  into  each  other's  districts,  it  fared  ill  with 
churches,  monasteries,  and  religious  persons,  as  it  did  with  the  laity  and  their  prop- 
erty. These  wars  were  more  destructive  still,  when  they  were  waged  by  one  of 
the  provincial  kings  or  overlords  against  another.  The  clergy  were  looked  upon  as 
hostile  tribesmen  and  treated  as  such.  All  this  violence  and  disorder  required  to 
be  checked  by  the  strong  hand  of  Papal  Kome. 

Abundant  proofs  moreover  of  all  that  is  said  in  the  preceding  pages  about  early 
Irish  culture,  are  to  be  found  in  the  writings  of  modern  English  scholars.  In  our 
day  there  exists,  happily,  a  passion  for  consulting  the  ancient  historical  monuments 
collected  in  public  libraries  and  museums  both  in  Great  Britain  and  in  Ireland. 
These  establish,  beyond  the  possibility  of  contradiction,  much  more  than  we  have 
advanced  here  in  favor  of  the  Irish  apostolate  of  learning  and  sanctity. 

The  reader  only  has  to  open  the  works  of  the  Most  Kev.  Dr.  JMoran,  to  find  a 
whole  treasury  of  erudition  on  this  point.  Two  centuries  after  the  invasion  of  Ire- 
land by  the  Danes,  we  have  evidence  from  English  sources  that  the  destruction 
wrought  by  these  barbarians,  and  their  pitiless  persecution  of  priests  and  monks, 
did  not  succeed  in  blotting  out  from  Ireland  the  fair  fruits  of  former  civilization  or 
the  last  of  the  great  schools,  which  had  made  her  the  Nurse  of  Scholars  and  Saints. 

In  1070,  the  fauious  Sulgen  (or  Sulgerius)  was  Bishop  of  Menevia.  This  great 
monastery  and  monastic  school  founded  by  St.  David,  himself  the  son  of  an  Irish 
mother,  owed  its  growth  and  its  fame  for  learning  to  Irish  monks.  One  of  these, 
known'as  "Johannes  Erigena"  (John  the  Irishman),  there  taught  geometry  and 
astronomy  with  such  distinction,  at  the  close  of  the  ninth  century,  that  Alfred  the 
Great  induced  him  to  take  up  his  abode  in  the  royal  palace,  and  become  the  preceptor 
of  the  young  Saxon  nobles.  Sulgen,  who  came  two  hundred  years  later,  was  not 
satisfied  with  such  knowledge  as  Menevia,  or  Glastonbury,  or  Lindisfarne  afforded 
in  his  day;  he  quitted  his  see,  resolved  to  seek  in  Ireland  for  such  masters  as  could 
satiate  his  thirst  of  knowledge.  After  having  been  driven  by  a  storm  on  the  coast 
of  Scotland,  and  suffering  there  a  long  detention,  he  was  fortunate  enough  to  reach 
his  destination.  But,  like  all  superior  minds  eager  to  have,  on  every  subject,  the 
last  words  of  Science,  he  was  not  satisfied  with  a  brief  sojourn  in  the  Schools  of 
33  (513) 


514  Ajjpe^idix. 

Ireland.  Ten  whole  years  spent  in  perfecting  his  knowledge  on  all  subjects, 
sacred  and  profane,  did  not  seem  too  long  to  the  ardent  student.  Having  thus 
gathered  the  ripest  fruits  Irish  scholarship  bore  in  those  days,  Sulgen  returned  to 
Menevia,  bent  on  raising  high  the  standard  of  learning  in  his  own  cherished  Alma 
Mater. 

A  more  illustrious  example  of  this  influence  of  Irish  scholarship,  is  found  in  the  per- 
son of  the  great  St.  Dunstan.  "  It  was  among  the  Irish  monks  of  Glastonbury,"  says 
Dr.  Moran,  "  that  his  genius  was  developed  and  his  mind  perfected  in  all  the  learning 
of  that  age.  His  ancient  biographer  writes,  that  '  numbers  of  illustrious  Irishmen, 
eminently  skilled  in  sacred  and  profane  learning,  came  into  England,  and  chose 
Glastonbury  for  their  place  of  abode'  (Osbeim,  in  Vit.  S.  Bunstani).  His  latest 
historian  is  not  less  explicit;  for  he  tells  us  that  '  Dunstan  was  fortunate  in  finding 
the  monastery  of  Glastonbury  a  seat  of  learning.  ...  It  was  at  this  time  occupied 
by  scholars  from  Ireland  who  were  deeply  read  in  profane  as  well  as  in  sacred 
literature.  They  sought  to  maintain  themselves  by  opening  a  school  to  which  the 
young  nobility  who  resided  in  the  neighborhood  repaired  for  education' (Hook, 
"  Archbishops  of  Canterbury,"  vol.  i.  p.  382  and  foil.).  The  details  which  have 
been  handed  down  regarding  his  studies  at  Glastonbury  give  us  some  idea  of  the 
literary  course  pursued  in  the  Irish  monasteries  at  this  period.  He  was  first  of  all 
instructed  in  the  Scriptures  and  the  sacred  writings  of  the  Fathers  of  the  Church, 
The  ancient  poets  and  historians  then  engaged  his  attention ;  but  he  showed  a 
special  taste  for  arithmetic,  geometry,  astronomy,  and  music.  His  manual  skill 
was  equal  to  his  intellectual  power.  Bells  which  he  himself  had  made  for 
Abingdon  were  still  preserved  there  in  the  thirteenth  century.  At  Glastonbury 
they  showed  crosses,  censors,  and  ecclesiastical  vestments,  the  work  of  his  hands. 
Above  all  he  loved  the  Scriptorium,  and  spent  much  of  his  time  in  writing  and 
illuminating  books.  His  skill  in  all  branches  of  human  science  was  so  great,  that 
the  only  plea  his  enemies  could  advance  against  him  was,  that  'he  had  been 
trained  to  necromancy  by  his  Irish  teachers  in  the  island  of  Avalon  '  "  (Dr.  Moran, 
"Fruits  of  Irish  Piety  among  the  Britons,"  in  Transactions  of  the  Ossory  Archae- 
ological Society,  Part  II.  ISTS). 

We  have  just  returned  from  Spain,  where  we  studied  in  Seville  itself,  and 
among  the  rich  treasures  of  the  Archiepiscopal  Library,  the  story  of  the  "  School 
of  Seville  "  under  SS.  Leander  and  Isidore,  from  579  to  632.  Any  one  who  takes 
up  tlie  interesting  works  recently  written  on  this  subject  by  German,  French,  and 
Spanish  authors,  cannot  fail  to  be  struck  by  the  urdverHalitii  of  knowledge  incul- 
cated, at  the  same  period,  in  the  Spanish  as  well  as  in  the  Irish  and  Anglo-Saxon 
schools.  Of  course,  it  is  admitted  by  English  writers  themselves,  that  the  matters 
and  methods  in  both  of  the  latter  were  identical,  being  taught  by  Irish  masters. 

Just  as  the  piety,  learning,  and  civilization  cultivated  by  Leander  and  Isidore, 
leavened  by  degrees  even  the  dominant  and  conquering  Gothic  race,  and  made 
them  soon  one  in  faith  and  nationality  with  the  native  Spaniards,  even  so  the 
apostles  of  Irish  education,  who  survived  the  massacres  and  destruction  wrought  by 
the  Danes,  tamed  and  civilized  the  fierce  Northern  Barbarians,  and  ended  by 
making  Christians  of  them.  The  destructive  lava  itself  became  soon  clothed  with 
the  lovely  vegetation  of  the  soil. 


Date  Due 

tiAn    » 

3  2006 

MAR  1 

f) 

BOSTON  COLLEGE 


3  9031   01213094  4 


/ 


4&, 


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^x^^ 


jOyiif 11 II      ^-^ 


